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In this article we’re going to cover the exit scam of the cryptocurrency exchange Octaex (https://octaex.com/). We’re going to follow the leads left by management, and see where it gets us. They pulled an exit scam of more than $10,000,000 at the time, and that’s the reason why we decided to cover this issue.
Who is Behind Octaex Management?
After users claimed they couldn’t withdraw their funds, and an apparent disappearance of the Octaex management, the crypto-community started to wonder what could potentially be wrong with the exchange. There were no listed contacts on the exchange at the time, besides their general support email, discord and telegram channel. So, we decided to run some web crawling algorithms to cross-reference relevant keywords with “Octaex”. One of them, “Team”, gave some relevant results to follow a lead.
source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3308625.msg34600025#msg34600025
archived: https://archive.fo/qUYSS
Allegedly, Octaex reached out to SWATcoin (http://www.swatcoin.network/) to offer their listing products on their exchange. The message was signed by an alleged “Octaex Merchant Team” (management) called Marek Kulczyk. But we’ll go back to this name later in this article.
We decided to search all existing (and still active) communications platform from Octaex to see what little information could we salvage from this “wreck”. We read every single message from all existing communications channels, and we found this on their official discord channel (https://discord.gg/Uv3r7tX).
source: https://discord.gg/Uv3r7tX
archived: https://archive.fo/x1BdU
From this screenshot, an Octaex discord admin explains that the project (https://octaex.com/) was based in Poland, with an offshore in Hong-Kong.
We went back to the name Marek Kulczyk and applied some web crawling algorithms to search for a target.
source: https://community.mcafee.com/t5/Vulnerability-Manager/Microsoft-Data-Access-Objects-Library-3-6-DLL-Hijacking/td-p/409848
archived: https://archive.fo/XDaaa
We’ve found a (supposedly) web-developer named “Marek Kulczyk” with the alias “kulczykm”. But that’s still not enough to make a case, so we decided to search for that alias paired with the name “Marek Kulczyk”, and we’ve found a match.
source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kulczykm/
archived: https://archive.fo/dpy8c
Oddly enough, we found a “Marek Kulczyk” on the social platform (https://www.linkedin.com) that has the username “kulczykm” that has been working since 2009 as a system and database administrator at SWISS KRNO sp. Z o.o., from Zielona Gora, Poland. If we go back a few steps in this article, the Octaex discord administrator stated that the project (https://octaex.com/) was based in Poland, and here we are, with a polish suspect.
We decided to search all his social media profiles, in hopes of getting any social media presence, but unfortunately all we could find was outdated cache(s) that would give a “404” error. All of his social media presence had been deleted from the web, with the exception of his Linkedin profile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kulczykm/), on which we could extract his registered email address.
source: https://rocketreach.co
We could only find his email address: marekk79@vp.pl , which is connected to a hidden Facebook profile.
source: https://www.facebook.com/login/identify?ctx=recover
That’s common practice and the number one rule for a successful exit scam. Unfortunately for “Marek Kulczyk”, we have enough circumstantial evidence to ask him some questions. So, here's his company’s contact and address.
source: https://www.swisskrono.pl/en/Contact
archived: https://archive.fo/MjMLp
source: https://www.google.com/maps
We still believe that there’s an accomplice (or multiple accomplices), mainly from Hong-Kong or China, since one of the admins on their discord also spoke fluent Chinese. It could be “Marek Kulczyk”, but it’s highly unlikely since he has nothing that references any Asian country where Chinese is spoken (on his LinkedIn). Even then, it could still be a possibility.
This is our best shot at finding some answers, and clearly “Marek Kulczyk” is the only candidate to build a bridge between the defrauded costumers and Octaex.
Happy hunting.
You should always investigate your sources thoughtfully, and take your conclusions from your own investigations.
Think!