The market for digital assets is full of froth and impossible claims. Every cryptocurrency is marketed as the next big thing. Most offer no new technology or innovation, but they are dressed up with the language of revolutionary breakthroughs and game-changing innovation.
Such might be said of the platform created by Josip Heit, the guy behind GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation AG, GS Partners, GS Trade, and the G999 cryptocurrency, as well as the associated real estate development, G999 Tower Dubai. Heit always wears tinted shades and a suit, and his manner evokes the impression of a Saul Goodman of cryptocurrency. We did a deep dive, so you don’t have to.
“Right now, everyone has the opportunity to start making money, even small funds today can create new millionaires tomorrow. GSPartners.global presents you with a unique product. NFT certificates which give you access into the metaverse. These meta-certificates are the key to a virtual world where you can gain, win, and earn.”
Thus claims a glossy video tweeted by Josip Heit regarding “Lydian.World,” a gaming platform “where technology partners, celebrities all coming together in one new world.”
Heit has been busy creating that world in Dubai, where his company, GSPartners, is based.
The Wall Street of Digital Assets
Dubai, the crystal city on an archipelago of desert islands, fast-becoming the Wall Street of digital assets.
Standing at 2722 feet, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world. At night, the half-mile-high facade becomes the world’s tallest billboard. For the low-low price of $70,000, a buyer can purchase a three-minute display that lights up on the side of the skyscraper.
Given the grandeur and prestige of the building, many big names have graced its facade over the years, including Disney, Cartier, and Huawei. However, much like the regulatory environment in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pretty much anyone with cash can feature a display on the Burj Khalifa.
In June of 2021, an ad appears on the facade of the Burj Khalifa one evening. Set to dramatic music befitting a Michael Bay movie, a numbered countdown begins flashing on the world’s tallest building.
Crosscut with the countdown is the scene of eager spectators standing on the ground, all with their smartphone cameras pointed at the Burj Khalifa. When the countdown hits zero, the word “G999” appears with the logo of a crowned lion’s head in profile.
As the music continues, illuminated words appear vertically on the facade of Burj Khalifa Tower: “Wealth, freedom, transparency, groundbreaking, world-changing, one community, one ecosystem” and so on.
One can find the youtube video of this spectacle at josipheit.com, where interestingly there is no email. The only contact methods are Instagram and Twitter, but questions sent to those accounts did not receive replies.
The branding of GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation is reminiscent of the MGM lion or the Ritz Carlton lion. The same imagery appears on Lydian.World, GS Partners, GS Trade, and various other entities controlled by Josip Heit. Each of the websites brims with broad corporate jargon and business platitudes.
There’s precious little real information, besides a list of various sectors in which Heit operates. He’s a newspaperman, a mining and real estate magnate, a luxury tourism expert, and most recently, it seems, a crypto entrepreneur.
It’s difficult to confirm or disprove any of these claims; emails to Deutsche Tageszeitung, the German newspaper, his company supposedly owns bounced back, and the website says that GSB Gold Standard Corporation AG is the owner, not GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation AG, Josip Heit’s company.
In the absence of conclusive information, let’s focus on public statements Josip Heit and his paid promoters have made about his business.
GS stands for Gold Standard, and the website has 52 affiliate URLs that all direct traffic to GSPartners, all of which were recently the subject of a securities fraud warning from the Quebecois government. GSPartners is not licensed to sell securities in any jurisdiction, but that might not be a problem in Dubai.
However, The GSPartners website gets traffic from America, Canada, Greece, and Portugal, according to SimilarWeb. Selling securities in those jurisdictions without a license is a problem.
A Labyrinth of Related Online Entities
GSPartners is just one of the subsidiaries of GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation AG, a shell company based in Kazakhstan. The “G” in G999 stands for Gold, and the 999 is for 999% pure gold, according to one of Josip Heit’s many press releases.
Josip Heit’s company launched G999, which is “a completely new communication system,” as well as Metaverse certificates named after Greek Gods and the planets of our solar system.
What do the certificates do and how do they give a person “access” to the metaverse? The website is short on detail and long on claims of incredible profitability. Typical language from the crypto ecosystem is jumbled together in vague and sometimes nonsensical ways.
In a 2020 press conference, Josip Heit had this to say, “Blockchain is not just a bit coin, it is something great that can be used for different purposes in almost all industries.”
I mean, I guess that’s generally true, but there is so little detail in statements like these that it sounds as if the speaker really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Let’s dig deeper into what Josip Heit is hawking. Here’s a diagram that purports to explain how the metaverse certificates work. Look at the supposed profit margins!
Josip Heit: The Man behind The Myth
You can usually find Josip Heit looking flashy with round purple-tinted shades in front of a techy background or religious clip art, always with the same tinted glasses.
Josip Heit seems to have taken a page from the SBF playbook. He hired Sophia Thomalla, a German actress and model, to shoot a commercial promoting G999. In the commercial, Thomalla wears a flashy red latex superhero suit with a matching overcoat and carries Thor’s hammer, except it is made of solid gold and bears an engraving of G999.
She walks into GSP and Josip Heit welcomes her with a menu of investment options. She chooses “VVIP Cold Staking Wallet Plus” and he asks, “Are you ready for staking?” at which point with a glimmer in her eye, she smashes a big gold coin from within a gold boulder with Thor’s hammer.
Then, they both pose behind the G999 and GSP logo.
On Twitter, German users were quick to criticize the G999 commercial, tweeting, “Are you actually ashamed to pull people over the table with your SCAM?!?!”
Another asked, “Aren’t you ashamed? You can get away with that. Promised!”
Another predicted a “bloodbath coming for investors.”
Josip also took pains to get the endorsement of Floyd Mayweather, Jr. who was already sanctioned by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) for touting three coin offerings without disclosing that he was receiving $200,000 from the creators of the coins.
At the time, Steven Peikin, the Co-Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, cautioned, “Investors should be skeptical of investment advice posted to social media platforms, and should not make decisions based on celebrity endorsements. Social media influencers are often paid promoters, not investment professionals, and the securities they’re touting, regardless of whether they are issued using traditional certificates or on the blockchain, could be frauds.“
Weaponizing Press Releases
You can also find Heit’s “press releases” that resemble news but really aren’t. It’s usually just Josip hyping his many wares or threatening legal action in one language or another against his many enemies. Many mainstream newswires like PR Newswire and Yahoo Finance have printed these press releases.
In one article, it’s not really clear who is talking, but supposedly Heit is being interviewed by a reporter.
“Just look at the internet, any so-called blogger or operator of a domain can today write mendacious allegations – completely anonymously – on the internet with almost impunity, here the fathers of this modern scourge of our civilisation have made considerable mistakes in its creation.”
It bothers Heit that people on the internet can make allegations anonymously; he mentions this in many of his statements. And Josip Heit seems to be quite litigious with his detractors.
GSB fights a PR against its critics
In 2021, Josip Heit announced on PRLeap.com that criminal charges would be filed against those who defame G999, warning that German law makes it a crime to knowingly publish false allegations, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Heit’s “extensive team of lawyers” was targeting “Various media and their companies,” in this aggressive legal crusade.
The press release was supposedly written by one Melanie Berger, of Hamburg, but it sounded more like Heit’s hackneyed writing, which is often full of legal mumbo jumbo, incomprehensible crypto jargon, and incomplete sentences.
Heit (writing as Ms. Berger) described his crusade as upholding journalistic integrity, having to do with “the preservation of human dignity and truthful information of the public.” He also invoked “the presumption of innocence” as a journalistic requirement, for good measure.
Who were these faceless rogues savagely failing to presume Josip Heit’s innocence?
One of Heit’s primary enemies is BehindMLM.com, a website devoted to “citizen journalist” news articles about “multi-level marketing” schemes. The website published at least 5 articles detailing Heit’s various recent campaigns as a big Ponzi scheme.
The site started back in 2010 when its creator declared, “There’s a lot of rubbish MLM review and news sites on the internet that masquerade solely as lead generation tools for their owners. I believe there’s a distinct lack of concise and clear information out there regarding companies within the MLM industry and MLM itself. The aim of Behind MLM is to fill that void and prove to be a useful resource to people curious about the MLM industry and the companies that exist within it.”
GSB recently posted a press release claiming victory over Google and GoDaddy in court. There’s a link to a legal document, but it is only part of the discovery process, which requires Google and Godaddy to come forward with the identities of the creators of BehindMLM which has called his company a fraud.
So, it’s not a victory, really, except to learn who he should sue for defamation, which he has been loudly threatening in other over-the-top press releases.
G999 Investor Discord
On the Discord group of GS Trade, which is called G999 Masternode, investors ask questions and trade information about their returns.
One user writes, “All I know is Mr. Heit said those who came in first and held will be rewarded and very happy by 4th quarter!!!” The same one also wrote, “I just am getting weekly rewards off the new certificates and using that to acquire more G999.
Meanwhile, another user sounded bullish – saying they were going “to lock down some more MasterNodes in my stash before the hard fork to the Smart Chain.”
Another observes, “What they haven’t told us is the format the new chain will take, for example wether we will hold the same amount of coins…” The user then adds, “Please don’t take this as an attack as this is not how its meant, I’m just looking forward to the facts for us investors being rolled out as at the moment the future is clear as mud.”
Disruption Banking contacted a person who promotes GS Partners online in an attempt to understand how the platform works. In an email, this person requested anonymity to speak openly about the company, writing that GS Partners does not pay to promote the platform or its investments, noting, “I own certificates and I built a sales team. My husband and I started when they launched and they have always paid us as promised.“
The person said they receive, “Residuals 9 deep and we get to share in huge company bonus pools (twice per month). Sounds like you need a sponsor/guide! If you are looking to make money with them and need a sponsor … I can help you out. A sponsor provides you with a registration link and helps you navigate the system. If you intend to refer others to make money, you must have a sponsor. If you register without one … your account will be restricted and one will be eventually assigned to you. (Possibly one that’s less helpful.). Make sense?“
Sponsors: “Not Financial Advisors”
GS Partners recently rebranded as Swiss Valorem Bank, so that the lion logo appears in Google searches for Swiss Valorem Bank. A Youtube video promoting the two as “pioneering the future of banking” contains a disclaimer that “We are not financial advisors and we are not offering financial advice.”
The narrator goes on to claim that they operate in a “highly regulated environment.” That is not how I would characterize Kazakhstan or the UAE.
Less than three minutes into the video, the narrator claims that “the goal here today is to double your money...” and shortly after claims, “if you can double your money every year, you will be rich.” This leads into the GS Partners metaverse certificates pitch, shown below.
When you buy a 5,000$ Nature certificate, you automatically receive 17,500$. The numbers forecasted for investors are beyond doubling – according to the video, 5,000$ will generate 13,000$ in one year, on top of the 17,500$ bonus. There’s no explanation of what underlying value is provided or the technology itself, just the rewards and how to sign up.
If that’s not a multi-level marketing scam, it certainly looks like one. We’ve seen Ponzi tokens in the past that had no actual underlying technology. I want to stress that this may not be the case; perhaps G999 is a revolutionary new communication platform like Josip Heit says. However, there is no evidence that G999 is actually staked on a blockchain or has “master nodes.”
Josip Heit refers to G999 as both a cryptocurrency and a blockchain, which is confusing. When pressed on this and whether or not the metaverse certificates and G999 are related, the promoter explained that, “GSPartners is the marketing arm. Not a broker. We are not allowed to promote GSP using the words ‘invest’ or ‘investments.'” adding, “G999 is the gas for their blockchain and it is on a few exchanges. Many have very high expectations for the coin.“
Author: Tim Tolka, writer, journalist, and BI researcher
The editorial team at #DisruptionBanking has taken all precautions to ensure that no persons or organizations have been adversely affected or offered any sort of financial advice in this article. This article is most definitely not financial advice.
4 Responses
Impressive article! JH never ceases to amaze with his preposterous content, compelling us to write about it. Keep us in the loop on his response, lol.
Here is an article I wrote a few years ago (https://g-crypt.com/g999-scam-opportunity/). Despite JH’s attempt to intimidate us into backing down, we remain unyielding and have invited him several times to move forward with court proceedings in South Africa. Nevertheless, he now appears to be hesitant.
Interestingly, despite having made a large deposit, he has since resorted to stalling upon realizing our determination to defend ourselves in court.
Well the fraud warnings certainly seem to be stacking up, not sure how josip will get it right to sue all of these regulators for bringing his company into disrepute or engaging in making false claims, as he is the one who must play by their rules.
Swiss Valorem Bank information:
Dear Sirs,
I dont know if you know but there is no Swiss Valorem Bank.
They are telling the users they bought the Swiss Valorem Bank.
It does not exist.
The only thing they did is renaming GSPartner in Swiss Valorem Bank.
They have no licence, nothing.
This is big fraud.
So my friends (in Australia) are trying to get me onboard with this dude who is now running http://www.auratus.gold. They’re saying he’s legit and that the group MLM are getting paid a lot of money to debunk him and that its click bait. I’m not sure what to believe anymore but I’m worried that a bunch of women over here are gunna get a ‘rug pull’ at some stage. I’ve done some research but its pretty scant. Any feedback from others would be appreciated big time!