Antares Trade is headed up by Alex Richter, played by Russian national Alexey Mikhailovich Zhirovkin.
Antares Trade and its spinoff Alcore Trade collapsed for good back in May.
Despite victim losses likely running into the hundreds of millions, Zhirovkin continues to be sheltered by Dominican Republic authorities.
BehindMLM has previously reported on Zhirovkin being a wanted fugitive from Russia.
Wanted on theft charges, Zhirovkin and his wife fled Russia for the Dominican Republic in 2012. He’s been living there ever since.
How Zhirovkin, a wanted fugitive, obtained permanent residence in the Dominican Republic is unclear.
Antares Trade surfaced in 2020. It was a simple MLM crypto Ponzi scheme, centered on AND Ponzi points.
The original iteration of Antares Trade collapsed in August 2021, promoting Zhirovkin to reboot the scam as Alcor Trade.
Same Ponzi business model, this time with an ANTD token and 200,000% ROI.
Alcor Trade lasted until February 2022. Its collapse saw Richter reboot again as “Antares Trade 2.0”.
As Antares Trade 2.0 began to collapse in May, Zhirovkin attempted a short-lived Alcor Trade reboot.
Unfortunately for Zhirovkin the law of diminishing returns had inevitably kicked in. BehindMLM called the collapse of Antares Trade 2.0 and Alcor Trade reboot in May 2022.
Accepting he’d milked as much as he was going to get out investors, Zhirovkin switched focus to prolonging investor complaints to authorities.
To that end he spent what was left of May and June gaslighting Antares and Alcor victims with bogus updates on YouTube.
By this time Zhirovkin had already begun representing he was based out of Mexico.
After the May 2022 Antares Trade 2.0 and Alcor Trade collapse, Richter starting pushing out updates about a marketing event in Dubai.
Supposedly Mike Tyson and Jordan Belfort were booked as speakers. The event otherwise being held in Dubai was tipped as Zhirovkin’s final exit-scam.
The Dubai event was originally scheduled for June 1st. As June 1st drew nearer, Zhirovkin rescheduled for July 15th.
Long story short; the event never happened and Zhirovkin didn’t leave the Dominican Republic.
The last update Zhirovkin put out as Alex Richter was on June 24th:
In the video Richter told investors there was “absolutely no reason to worry”.
I’m fine. Antares is developing very actively and everything is great.
According to information received by BehindMLM, sometime in June or July Zhirovkin was approached by a group of victims in the Dominican Republic.
This meeting didn’t go well for Richter, prompting him to sue his victims for “assault and threats”.
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for September 26th in a court in Higuey.
Zhirovkin and his wife live about 40 minutes away, in a private gated residence in Cocotal.
Despite openly running a Ponzi scheme believed to run into the hundreds of millions, to date Dominican Republic authorities have taken no action against Zhirovkin.
He has a Dominican Republic residential permit and lives openly in the country.
Zhirovkin is not the only MLM scammer Dominican Republic’s authorities have sheltered.
Huascar Lopez, a Dominican Republic national, heads up the notorious CashFX Group Ponzi scheme.
Likely dwarfing Antares Trade in size, CashFX Group’s investor losses are believed to run into the billions.
Dominican Republic authorities have turned a blind eye to CashFX Group’s financial fraud for years.
It wasn’t until November 2021, the same month CashFX Group collapsed, that the Superintendent of Banks issued a CashFX Group fraud warning.
Shortly thereafter Lopez fled the Dominican Republic.
Lopez’s disappearance was initially framed as a holiday in Europe. He hasn’t been seen or heard from in months.
Securities in the Dominican Republic are regulated by the Superintendency of the Securities Market, otherwise known as SIMV.
Since 2012, SIMV has been headed up by Gabriel Castro Gonzales (right).
BehindMLM continues to receive requests for assistance from Antares Trade and Alcor Trade victims, to which we’re unable to respond.
BehindMLM does its best to report and keep track of MLM related fraud, but at the end of the day we’re not a regulator.
If you lost money in Antares Trade, Alcore Trade or even CashFX Group for that matter, and want to know why the Dominican Republic has taken no action and continues to turn a blind eye to MLM related securities fraud, contact details are provided in the footer of SIMV’s website.
Another official worth noting is Jose Ernesto Baez, head of SIMV’s Department of Protection and Education for Investors.
Baez maintains a relatively active official SIMV Twitter profile.
SimilarWeb currently tracks growth in visits to Antares Trade’s and Alcore Trade’s website from France (49% and 52% of total website traffic respectively).
This suggests that, even though both Ponzi schemes have collapsed and withdrawals are disabled, new victims continue to be recruited.