How To Find Company Director Details - EU ?

[fintel]

So, one of my clients operates a non-profit NGO, and was recently scammed by someone with an EU company registration.
It's only a relatively small amount, but in this country a little goes a long way, and provides medical assistance for many, and my client works incredibly hard for this cause.
I'm not that hopeful of helping them recover the funds, but I am trying to assist them by finding the ownership details for this company.
I did a goog search, which took me to many websites offering databases of EU company information, I think I found the company in question, but I could not find any ownership names.
I'm not sure whether this is because of privacy regulations, or in some cases I had to use the translator, which didn't help much.

Can anyone suggest where I can find such info - and is there any agency where a complaint can be lodged - the company is based in Germany, and was seemingly providing unlicensed payment processing - and is now ghosting my client.

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

[aniglo22]

Hey this is the official website of the company register : Unternehmensregister or you could use northdata. You can could file a police report : Startseite . And also how did your friend paid ? Maybe its still possible to recover some part of the funds

 

[apres777]

fintel said:
So, one of my clients operates a non-profit NGO, and was recently scammed by someone with an EU company registration.
It's only a relatively small amount, but in this country a little goes a long way, and provides medical assistance for many, and my client works incredibly hard for this cause.
I'm not that hopeful of helping them recover the funds, but I am trying to assist them by finding the ownership details for this company.
I did a goog search, which took me to many websites offering databases of EU company information, I think I found the company in question, but I could not find any ownership names.
I'm not sure whether this is because of privacy regulations, or in some cases I had to use the translator, which didn't help much.

Can anyone suggest where I can find such info - and is there any agency where a complaint can be lodged - the company is based in Germany, and was seemingly providing unlicensed payment processing - and is now ghosting my client.

Any suggestions appreciated.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that.

You can try your luck with the german version of "company house".

It's free of use and you don't need to sign up. You can find ownership structure there and who's the director of the company. It's probably only available in German though.

https://www.handelsregister.de/rp_web/welcome.xhtml
for financial information you can also try this one. depending on company type financial information has to be released here.

https://www.bundesanzeiger.de/pub/de/start?0

Last edited: Jun 5, 2024

 

[fintel]

aniglo22 said:
Hey this is the official website of the company register : Unternehmensregister or you could use northdata. You can could file a police report : Startseite . And also how did your friend paid ? Maybe its still possible to recover some part of the funds
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for your suggestions, the scammer accepted a payment on behalf of my client - we have asked the payer to issue a chargeback - it won't help my client much, but hopefully will create problems for the person who defrauded them.

apres777 said:
Sorry to hear that.

You can try your luck with the german version of "company house".

It's free of use and you don't need to sign up. You can find ownership structure there and who's the director of the company. It's probably only available in German though.

https://www.handelsregister.de/rp_web/welcome.xhtml
for financial information you can also try this one. depending on company type financial information has to be released here.

https://www.bundesanzeiger.de/pub/de/start?0
Click to expand...

Thank you - I really appreciate your assistance!

 

[aniglo22]

fintel said:
Thanks so much for your suggestions, the scammer accepted a payment on behalf of my client - we have asked the payer to issue a chargeback - it won't help my client much, but hopefully will create problems for the person who defrauded them.


Thank you - I really appreciate your assistance!
Click to expand...

Do you have contacted the bank from the scammer ? There is a possibility that they can freeze the account if you mention it in connection with a police report .

And also some banks have fraud hotlines

 

[fintel]

aniglo22 said:
Do you have contacted the bank from the scammer ? There is a possibility that they can freeze the account if you mention it in connection with a police report .

And also some banks have fraud hotlines
Click to expand...

We think they are using Revolut - we suspect they have already withdrawn the funds from their bank account - by the time my client realised what was happening, it was too late - but we have submitted a report to the bank, we don't really expect to get anything back, but we hope to create as much hell as possible for the scammer.

 

[aniglo22]

fintel said:
We think they are using Revolut - we suspect they have already withdrawn the funds from their bank account - by the time my client realised what was happening, it was too late - but we have submitted a report to the bank, we don't really expect to get anything back, but we hope to create as much hell as possible for the scammer.
Click to expand...

Did you check if its a real company on the company registry . You should be able to see the appointed director ? Was the bank account under the name of the company ?

 

[fintel]

aniglo22 said:
Did you check if its a real company on the company registry . You should be able to see the appointed director ? Was the bank account under the name of the company ?
Click to expand...

It's a bit complicated. My client lives in a country where it can be difficult/time-consuming to find payment processors. My client needed to accept a payment urgently, to assist with medical expenses, and realises it wasn't a particularly good idea to go about it this way. The scammer accepted a payment on their behalf, using Stripe, and then disappeared. We are reasonably sure they were based in Germany. The receipt provided from Stripe to the payer included a company name - I have now checked, and that company name is registered, but with a completely different director's name than previously provided (of course, the original name could have been fake, but my client did perform some research, and found this person online under the given name). Having looked at all the correspondence, I can see how my client thought this looked okay.
But, it's possible that the scammer's company is registered in a different country - more research to do. We have submitted fraud report to Stripe, now just waiting ...