Royal Pay Europe

A summary of what happened?

Royal Pay Europe is a financial services provider that has faced significant controversy, including attempts to censor negative information about its business practices. These efforts have attracted attention due to the serious allegations against the company. Below are three major concerns, complaints, and accusations:

1. Financial Fraud and Regulatory Violations: Royal Pay Europe has been accused of mishandling client funds and failing to comply with necessary financial regulations, such as Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) protocols. Investigations suggest that the company may have manipulated regulatory processes to facilitate illicit transactions, raising suspicions of involvement in fraudulent financial activities​.
2. Money Laundering and Ties to Organized Crime: Royal Pay Europe has been accused of laundering money through its payment systems. Reports have also connected the company to organized crime groups, with suspicions that it facilitated transactions for these networks, potentially enabling illegal financial flows and tax evasion.
3. Censorship and Reputation Management: The company has made concerted efforts to censor negative reviews and investigative reports online. It has been accused of using legal threats, fake DMCA notices, and reputation management strategies to suppress content that exposes its alleged involvement in fraud, regulatory breaches, and unethical business practices​.

These actions raise concerns about transparency and the ethics of using digital tools to hide misconduct from public scrutiny and regulatory authorities.

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

What was Royal Pay Europe trying to hide?

Royal Pay Europe‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling Royal Pay Europe in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Royal Pay Europe may be trying to remove from the internet –

Here are ten adverse news items, allegations, lawsuits, sanctions, complaints, and negative reviews associated with Royal Pay Europe, along with sources and citations:

1. Money Laundering Allegations: Royal Pay Europe has been linked to money laundering schemes. The company allegedly manipulated its Know Your Customer (KYC) processes to facilitate suspicious offshore transactions, raising significant concerns about its involvement in illegal financial activities.
2. Financial Fraud Accusations: Multiple reports accuse Royal Pay Europe of financial fraud, including mishandling client funds and failing to comply with regulatory requirements. These issues have raised red flags about the company’s transparency and business practices.
3. Ties to Organized Crime: The company has been linked to individuals and groups associated with organized crime, with allegations that it facilitated illicit transactions for criminal organizations. These connections further deepen concerns about the company’s operations.
4. Regulatory Violations: Royal Pay Europe has been accused of violating financial regulations in several jurisdictions. These violations include non-compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) protocols and operating without the necessary licenses.
5. Negative Customer Reviews: Clients of Royal Pay Europe have reported a range of complaints, including delayed payments, poor customer service, and a lack of transparency in fees and transactions. These issues have led to a tarnished reputation in the financial services industry.
6. Legal Disputes: The company has faced lawsuits related to fraud, regulatory violations, and customer complaints. These legal challenges have been part of its efforts to avoid public exposure of its alleged misconduct.
7. Attempts to Censor Critical Information: Royal Pay Europe has been accused of aggressively suppressing negative information online. This includes issuing legal threats, using fake DMCA notices, and manipulating SEO to bury critical content.
8. Suspicious Offshore Transactions: The company’s involvement in suspicious offshore financial activities has raised concerns about its role in enabling tax evasion and other illicit financial operations.
9. Failure to Comply with AML Laws: Regulatory bodies have flagged the company for potential failures to enforce anti-money laundering measures, increasing suspicions about its use as a platform for illegal financial activities.
10. Reputation Management Tactics: Royal Pay Europe has reportedly manipulated its online presence, creating fake positive content to drown out negative reviews and criticism. These tactics highlight broader concerns about its transparency and ethics.

These accusations and controversies suggest ongoing concerns about the company’s financial integrity and its efforts to control negative perceptions.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of Royal Pay Europe (or actors working on behalf of Royal Pay Europe), we will inform Royal Pay Europe of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that Royal Pay Europe may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Royal Pay Europe, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Royal Pay Europe to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

Since Royal Pay Europe made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which Royal Pay Europe is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for Royal Pay Europe

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is Royal Pay Europe Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. Royal Pay Europe used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. Royal Pay Europe could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.

Faced with these limitations, some companies like Royal Pay Europe have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. Royal Pay Europe is certainly keeping interesting company here….

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by Royal Pay Europe creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

In committing numerous offences, Royal Pay Europe either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Royal Pay Europe, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. Royal Pay Europe is in great company ….

What else is Royal Pay Europe hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Royal Pay Europe] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on Royal Pay Europe that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.