Kuetzal Scam – Fraud with Kuetzal loans. Kuetzal is a scam.

CRITICAL NOTE About Kuetzal SCAM: In December 2019, it was made public a significant number of facts that undermine completely the credibility of Kuetzal as a reliable P2P platform.

You can learn more details on this scandal on the following blog posts:

• Jorgen Wolf from Financially Free
• Oscar Harrington from Explore P2P

Based on these facts and the lack of reply from Kuetzal, Many investors started withdrawing funds from the platform. I will share here the progress on funds recovery. I will not start a buyback guarantee since the projects I invested in seem legit. I’m also responsible for the decision to invest in such loans and was aware of the risk. If all investors start a massive buyback guarantee request, the platform will not have any other change as collapse. The same as happened in 20-22nd of January with Envestio Scam Alert. Many reliable P2P Platforms have disabled buyback guarantee because of huge panic in P2P lending platforms in Europe.

Since we have invested at Kuetzal in August 2019 we were impressed with the returns but it was from the story too good to be true. It was hard to believe that there is a possibility to invest in projects with higher than 20% annual returns and offering a buyback guarantee. Scam? Fraud?

An there starts the interesting Kuetzal mover, Scam Warnings and Red Flags. In October 2019, Kuetzal announced changes in its terms and services and also changes to the company management. [ From the same store, also Envestio changed the management team which caused the panic for investors ] We have been investing in the platform since we met with the prior CEO, Alberts Cevers, and we cancelled all new deposits until I’m able to understand what this change means for the platform.

Kuetzal Scam: Updated Terms & Conditions

On the same day, without prior notice, investors opening their Kuetzal platform faced new Terms & Conditions without any actual choice to refuse. After reading, nothing out of the ordinary when compared with any other P2P lending platform can be highlighted, stating the risks and avoiding any potential liability in relation to the loans presented, but once more, these bad practices in communication with investors must stop.

Just some of the pearls I hope everyone already is familiar in P2P lending platforms terms of service texts:

1.6. Permission for a User to make a loan request and assigning a risk category to it in the Portal does not constitute any of the following:
…
– the Portal Operator’s confirmation or any other indication that the Borrower is creditworthy;
– the Portal Operator’s confirmation that the relevant project is viable;

Kuetzal new Terms & Services

“1.7 … Among other, the Portal Operator may TERMINATE the operation of the Portal at its own discretion at ANY time.”

Kuetzal new Terms & Services

“1.8. The Portal Operator has the right to amend or supplement the Terms of Service and all other operating rules, guidelines and policies of the Portal (including the Privacy Policy) or lay down additional conditions, WITHOUT ADVANCE NOTICE.”

Kuetzal new Terms & Services

“5.5. The information prepared by a Borrower for borrowing funds is published to the Users in the Portal in its FULL EXTENT…”

Kuetzal new Terms & Services

“5.6 … The Portal Operator does not perform any due diligence of the Borrower or the Project.”

Kuetzal new Terms & Services

Scary, right – it was enough to blink red light and investors understood that Kuetzal is Scam? It should be! This is a good wake up call to confirm that any funds invested on these types of platforms are at risk and we should be careful before making the decision to invest.

Kuetzal: Alborg Petro Loan Issues – Potential Scam?

On December 10th, Oscar Harrington from ExploreP2P blog reported its findings regarding an investigation of one of the companies that received a loan through Kuetzal. You can find the report here. Based on the findings it is almost impossible not to consider such loan a fraud, even more taking into consideration the recent changes in the platform Terms & Services.

In reply to this report, Kuetzal quickly published a damage control message on their facebook page:

“Alborg Petrol.
Recently one of the p2p bloggers has published an article about one of the loans listed on Kuetzal Platform- SIA Alborg Petrol company.
Going inside the article, several topics were raised regarding company’s activities, financials, actual presence in registered address etc.
We have to point out the fact, that:
There was a series of answers that were provided, quite a few of these argumentations are covered in the article.
While Kuetzal was analyzing this project, we have done a due diligence from our part. Information provided by the Alborg Petrol management was checked and confirmed. Company has proven their current partnership with well-known oil companies, bringing running and finished contracts as one of the proofs of their activities. Company is performing their deals mainly through their employees, agents and intermediaries, who are usually located all around the world, depending on the specific partner location.
A fact that Alborg Petrol is a small-structure company along with highly-competitive business area, business “addiction” from larger oil companies create additional risks for Alborg Petrol deal, and this is one of the reasons why project is offering 20.5% for Kuetzal investors, higher than average interest rate among Kuetzal projects. Kuetzal also contributed with 351.500€ in this project through Kuetzal Care as the project was not fully funded as requested by the company terms.
Kuetzal is continuing communication with Alborg Petrol representatives, currently we do not have neither financial or informational claims to the company.”

Kuetzal Facebook Page

As you can imagine, such communication just opened doors to more and more questions, that remain answered until now. The trust of the community is at risk and I imagine a significant number of investors will decide to leave the platform entirely.

Kuetzal Final Steps

We all know that Kuetzal is already confirmed SCAM. And now because of huge panic and withdrawal requests also Envestio is down and most likely will not reopen and able to handle the pressure.

If it is too good to be true – AVOID. Or diversify your investment portfolio as much as possible. I guess all these platforms which are closing down right now are just Ponzi scams already from the beginning.