Work From Home Individuals - BEWARE

The following is a true story of how Lufthansa Industry Solutions (LHIND)*, or an entity impersonating them, has defrauded a U.S. contractor (me) of $1,289,448. 

Is this a singular action or perhaps a class action against other contractors who are doing work on this platform?

Lufthansa Industry Solutions (LHIND), or some entity impersonating them, provides services to smartphone app creators with ways to optimize their apps and increase their rankings  on various platforms.  This is done by contracting with over 300,000 independent individuals around the globe.  It appears that the profiles of these contractors vary widely, from stay at home parents, to people between jobs, to people that are looking for some additional monthly income (such as myself).  Funds used to start an account in the LHIND system and payment to individuals are in crypto currency.  Each contractor is assigned to a dedicated customer service representative (CSR) who assists in helping the contractors get access to their assignments and guiding them through using crypto wallets for deposits and withdrawals.  While just a guess on my part, I doubt that the majority of the contractors have any clue about the world of crypto and aren't familiar with how transactions take place prior to this gig.....I certainly didn't. 

All communication is done via WhatsApp.

Every time  a contractor logs into the system (shown next) they are greeted by the message below informing them of the gift reward program.

The defrauding, at least in this documented case, begins when I was fortunate/lucky enough to see gold bit coins raining down on my screen and then after some scurrying around by the CSR to get "verification", it was confirmed that I was rewarded a gift of one of the larger prizes and is presented with the reward certificate in the image below.  Yes, the amount is $1,170,077 USD.

Additionally the gift reward appears in my Orders Completed log:

Unfortunately, little did I know at the time, but this would be the genesis of my soon to be, horror story.

An assignment consists of 40 tasks (for a starting contractor).  To be able to close out the assignment, you have to complete all of the tasks for the money to flow through to your personal LHIND wallet.

There are pretty rare tasks that are called "bundled" or "lucky" orders (for here on, I'll refer to them as lucky orders).  These are large in dollar value and will cause your wallet to go negative.  In order to continue and complete your set of tasks you have to transfer money into your account.  Once you add the funds and complete the lucky orders,  the amount that caused your account to go negative is included in the task commission.

I'm in a WhatsApp group of other LHIND contractors who chat back and forth.  To understand how rare these lucky orders are, here's a hand full of quotes: "I haven't received any lucky orders recently."  "I finished my tasks during lunch, I didn't  encounter a lucky order."  "I haven't encountered a bundled order in five days."  I could go on and on.

BUT, immediately after I received the $1,170,077 gift, a lucky order dropped (task 36 of 40) and I had to go through the hassle of having funds wired from my bank to cover the $1,355.18 negative amount.  Those of you who are technically oriented have just thought "I bet the system has an algorithm in place to cause that to happen."  If that's what you're thinking, I would agree with you, but it gets much worse.

Task 37 was also a lucky order causing my wallet to go negative to a tune of $3,850.99.  I had to take funds out of a savings account to cover that one.

At this point I'm thinking "surely since lucky orders are so rare and I hit 2 in a row, this nightmare is over" and started dreaming of closing out my set of tasks and cashing out well over a $1 million.

Task 38 was a regular order, but then task 39 was another huge lucky order causing my account to go negative by $9,936.91.  To cover that one I had to hit a home equity line of credit.

I completed Task 40 and closed out that set.  At that point, I was looking to withdraw $1,289,448, which consisted of the gift amount, earned commissions and a return of the $15,143.08 I had to come up with to clear the three negative balances.  

It's pretty clear to me that the system has algorithms in place intended to keep one from collecting on large gift awards by throwing their accounts negative and figuring they will ultimately just leave the system (see the tab entitled "And It Happened To Others"), even if one can clear the negative balances, there are more roadblocks built in.  

After the excitement diminished a bit, the CSR walked me through doing a test withdrawal of $500 into my external non-custodial crypto wallet which was successful (please click on the link if you wish to learn more about how these wallets function).  The CSR then walked me through withdrawing the remainder in my LHIND wallet into the same external crypto wallet.  After several days had passed, the funds had not appeared in the external wallet.  I inquired about the status with the CSR and was provided the WhatsApp phone number for the Company Accountant.

This is where things start to get very strange......the following journey reveals how LHIND may have all along had a plan in place to keep contractors from ultimately receiving their gift reward(s) and at the same time also deny them large earned commissions which may have been bundled in as part of the withdrawal of that reward.  Please read on.

I then reached out to the company accountant via WhatsApp and was in for a big surprise.

The initial response from the LHIND "company accountant", apparently typed as casually as if the amount allegedly required was insignificant, was :
"Hello, I found that your withdrawal amount is: 1,289,448.00USD. You only need to deposit 22% of the total account balance into your personal on-chain wallet, which is = 283,678.56USD, and verify the flow of funds in the on-chain wallet. This amount is enough to support your withdrawal amount. Then keep it in your personal wallet for 24-48 hours. You can transfer the funds in your personal wallet (including the withdrawal amount on the platform) back to your bank account. You only need to pay a wire transfer fee of 20-30USD. You don't need to transfer money to anyone, including merchants and platforms."

If this wasn't such a serious matter, it would be comical.  For comparison, following are the median home sale prices in the U.S.,  by state, which fall into the general range of the funds being demanded:

So, the company accountant is demanding that I somehow "scrap together" funds equivalent to the median sales price of a home in Nebraska or West Virginia.  This might be a good time to go to the top of this web page and look at the profiles of LHIND contractors and guess how many, out of over 300,000 of them, would be able to do this.  Your answer will probably be arrived at very quickly.

The company accountant goes on to say:

"Once your Crypto.com On-​​Chain wallet has enough funds flow to support your withdrawal amount, your withdrawal amount will be automatically transferred to your wallet.* Don't worry, no one is asking you for money now. You only need to deposit 22% of your total account balance into your personal wallet within 24-48 hours. You can then transfer the funds in your personal Crypto.com On-​​Chain wallet back to your bank account.

Things are not as bad as you think. First, your money is not lost, and second, no one is asking you for funds. I don't know why you are frustrated. My suggestion to you is that you can try to ask your relatives and friends to lend you some money, and claim that the money will be returned within 24 hours, because the money is not transferred to others, but deposited into your bank account. When there is a transaction record in your account, the money can be withdrawn to your bank account and then returned to others."

An analogy of this charade, if it happened in the U.S., would be if a person wins a state lottery with a prize of  $1,300,000.  The lottery commission sends the person their congratulations along with telling the person that in order to receive the money, they would need to come up with $286,000 and deposit it into a bank account for two days.  Unless they did that, the commission could not transfer the winnings into the person's account and the commission would keep the lottery prize. 

The reality, however, is that LHIND has no access/link to see or monitor a person's private wallet.  A person's private wallet doesn't link or report activity to LHIND accounting systems, so what the accountant is demanding be done is a complete falsehood.

A screenshot of my onchain wallet:

In an effort to get the matter resolved and receive the funds rightly due,  I reached out to my CSR, since the accountant had ceased to even read the WhatsApp messages sent (those that use WhatsApp know that one can tell if a message was delivered and when/if the message was read).  

During the back and forth messages between them, the CSR sent this message: "If your funds are always congested in the air or the verification is delayed, the funds on the blockchain cannot be confirmed, then the blockchain merchant will confiscate all your funds".  

Another threat from LHIND to heap additional pain and suffering upon me.   I had already been dealing with sleepless nights and anxiety as a result of the actions by LHIND and the demands to come up with over $280,000 in order to claim the gift prize .

================================================================

04/10/2025:

I once again sent emails to LHIND upper management requesting that they get involved to right this wrong and undo the fraud perpetrated by their company.

Dietmar Focke, the Managing Director of LHIND, opened the email 5 times and clicked on the link to this webpage 4 times, but never responded to me.  

Daniel Prinz, the VP of Digitalization of LHIND and the one whose signature appears on the certificate shown above, never opened his email (assuming that the email address I was able to obtain is the correct one for him).  An interesting, and perhaps pertinent, side note.....before sending emails, I connected with Mr. Prinz on LinkedIn.  After sending the first email, I discovered that Mr. Prinz's profile had been deleted from LinkedIn.

=================================================================================

5/8/2025

The following executives in various Lufthansa divisions have received one or more emails about this fraud.  Most have opened the emails and many clicked the link to come to this webpage and learn about this travesty.  However, not one has reached out with an offer to lend assistance or deny that their company is involved.

What might one deduce by their silence? 

=================================================================================

• Dietmar Focke, Lufthansa Industry Solutions (LHIND) - Managing Director 

Others who received emails:

• Daniel Prinz, Lufthansa Industry Solutions (LHIND) - VP of Digitalization

• Ralf Struckmeier, Lufthansa Industry Solutions (LHIND) - VP Markets

• Peter Horstmann, Lufthansa Industry Solutions (LHIND) - Information Security Officer

• Christian Schmitz, Lufthansa Industry Solutions (LHIND) - Associate Director

=================================================

A MAJOR CONCERN ABOUT THIS POTENTIAL ONGOING FRAUD

The gift reward  program is supposed to have $500 Million in funds to give away (image shown above toward the top).  The largest prize is $2,777,777.  Whomever wins between $2,000,000 and $2,777,777 is going to be told that they will have to put 22% of the gift amount (which will be between $440,000 and $6111,111) into a crypto wallet for a few days before they will be awarded the prize.  Virtually NO ONE will be able to (or choose to) do that in order to claim the prize.

=================================================

So, if my assumptions are correct, it appears that the program was designed from the outset with a way to not have to actually pay out the largest prize monies, nor the money stolen from contractors and thus, again, if assumptions are correct, is a program riddled with fraud and corruption.  Please see the tab entitled: "I Think I've Broken the Code".

=================================================

* Any time I make a reference to Lufthansa Information Systems or LHIND, I do that because that is who is represented on the platform as running the system.  If an investigation proves this to be incorrect, then those references should be replaced with "or an entity which is impersonating LHIND".  I have no intention of accusing LHIND of this theft and fraud regarding my funds, if it's proven that they are not the entity running the platform.