Aron, Stephan and Christian Steinkeller have been outed as purchasers of the Eliminalia fame administration company.
Eliminalia is notoriously identified for his or her blackhat strategy to “erasing” their shopper’s previous.
The Steinkellers had been outed as Eliminalia purchasers by way of a leaked paperwork obtained by Forbidden Tales.
Forbidden Tales cite themselves as a
community of journalists whose mission is to guard, pursue and publish the work of different journalists dealing with threats, jail, or homicide.
Eliminalia is a Spanish firm run by founder Diego “Didac” Sanchez (proper)
Fortunately the Steinkellers or Eliminalia didn’t resort to jail or homicide. As a substitute they focused protection of their unlawful exploits by way of threats and manipulation.
The Steinkellers had been high earners within the infamous $4 billion greenback OneCoin Ponzi scheme.
The brothers promoted the rip-off by “One Dream Staff” branding.
In 2021 information broke that the Steinkellers had been indicted in Italy on OneCoin associated expenses.
That very same yr a shell firm paid Eliminalia €38,000 euros on the Steinkellers’ behalf.
As reported by Forbidden Tales, ways utilized by Eliminalia embody:
- impersonating European Union officers;
- abusing GDPR legal guidelines; and
- submitting bogus DMCA claims (supported by fabricated backdated articles)
Based mostly on the information they’ve reviewed, Forbidden Tales claims Eliminia efficiently eliminated articles from “tons of of journalists” between 2015 and 2021.
Eliminalia claims its companies take away “undesirable and inaccurate info” for purchasers with a “proper to be forgotten,” however almost 50,000 inner firm paperwork leaked to Forbidden Tales contradict this narrative.
The recordsdata present how Eliminalia labored for scammers, spy ware corporations, torturers, convicted criminals, corrupt politicians and others within the international underworld to cover public-interest info.
Earlier reporting, together with by Remainder of World, recognized a few of Eliminalia’s purchasers – however this leak, which incorporates confidential emails, shopper names, contracts and different authorized paperwork – offers a fuller understanding of the opaque firm’s operations.
Along with focusing on reputable media protection of his purchasers,
Sánchez and his enterprise associate José María Hill Prados additionally run at the very least 50 corporations globally, together with a surrogacy firm dealing with litigation for little one trafficking.
Outfits like Eliminalia are capable of do what they do on account of outdated DMCA legal guidelines and well-intentioned however asinine European GDPR legal guidelines.
Knowledge safety legal guidelines, Eliminalia and different corporations realized, may very well be weaponized to take away content material from the web. Two legal guidelines – the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and GDPR – had been simply exploitable.
As a part of the protection of the leaked Eliminalia recordsdata, OCCRP reached out to the Steinkellers for remark. They declined.
Forbidden Tales reached out to Eliminalia for remark. Additionally they declined.
Upon studying of pending protection of their exploits, Eliminalia rapidly rebranded as Idata Safety.
Firm filings reviewed by Forbidden Tales verify the rebrand, presumably ensuing from investigations by journalists and researchers that generated unfavorable press.
However when two members of the consortium visited the workplace, an worker mentioned, “the corporate known as Idata Safety, however we belong to Eliminalia.”
Sánchez, the founder, was not in Barcelona, in response to the worker.
In the event you’re questioning whether or not BehindMLM was focused by the Steinkellers and Eliminalia, I do recall receiving some GDPR nonsense associated to the Steinkellers.
Though they’ve principally dried up, scammers in Europe nonetheless typically attempt on the ruse. I solely preserve correspondence despatched by legal professionals so if what I’m remembering was despatched by Eliminalia, it might have been cookie-cutter sufficient for me to only reply to and delete.
I did word one July 2021 discover archived on Lumen Database. Despatched from “International Information” and filed as a bogus DMCA discover in opposition to BehindMLM’s unique reporting on the Steinkellers abandoning OneCoin, I imagine that is in all probability the work of Eliminalia.
For reference, BehindMLM unilaterally declines to behave on any bogus GDPR requests.
