Thread by @thetrickytrade

I had to delete the previous thread because someone went complaining to Twitter that the thread contained private information.

Reposting this story again with some edits.

A week back @artijourno from @livemint published this piece about @HedonovaFund

I had a small investment with Hedonova purely from an experimental and curiosity point of view. I was always apprehensive about their legitimacy.

So let's dive deeper. 👇

livemint.com/market/stock-m…

The article claims that Hedonova is basically Anurag Bhatia's (ex-Minance CEO) new venture, with a new face and fictional characters.

A quick primer on Anurag Bhatia and history:
thenewsminute.com/article/sebi-b…

Here’s my review of Hedonova Fund. @twitter everything contained in this thread is either public information or my own information and data. @HedonovaFund Is making every attempt to get this thread deleted by reporting them under a false pretext, so take note before flagging.

Hedonova calls itself an investment fund for alternative assets. Think Mutual Fund that invests in alternative assets such as paintings, litigation finance, crypto, startups, p2p, agronomy, etc.

Very interesting indeed. 🤔

While you can invest in a lot of these assets individually through platforms like masterworks, forge, etc having a fund do that for you makes it far easier and more professional since you hope that the folks running it have relevant experience in alt. assets.

ℹ️ For full disclosure, here's proof of my investment and subsequent withdrawal and I did receive the entire investment back from them with the returns earned.

But that is also how Ponzi schemes work. As long as new scapegoats keep coming in, the old ones get paid.

Let's look at the company Hedonova LLC. From their website:
"Hedonova LLC is located at 8, The Green, Suite B, City of Dover, Delaware 19901."

It's a virtual office address and you will find 100s of companies registered at the same address.

The domain name is hedonova.io registered in 2021-12-20. The domain is privacy protected, already a huge 🚩 for a financial institution.

Their phone number and Whatsapp numbers both listed on their website are both virtual numbers from Twilio.

Their website lists a number and LA address as their HQ. The phone number listed is a virtual number. I reached out to the property management from Silverstein Properties and they could not verify that a company named Hedonova existed in the building however they did mention...

...that Regus occupies a space in the building and the company could be their client. Surprisingly, Hedonova does not list a suite number on the address.

Should I give them a visit during my next trip to LA?

The fund is registered under Regulation D of the SEC & lists: sec.gov/Archives/edgar…

👉 Alexander Cavendish as the CEO
👉 Suman Banerjee as the Promoter
👉 Shamit Hansa as the Exec. Officer

You will find absolutely no information about the above characters anywhere on the web.

👉 Empty or Placeholder Linked profiles.
👉 Mentions of the names on articles promoting/covering Hedonova.

These fictional characters do not exist! You can form an LLC in the US as any Tom, Dick, and Harry and file a Reg D Form. You are asked for your name and address but not ID

You would imagine graduates from eth Zurich, ex Millenium Partner Fund Managers, and other folks with such accomplishments would at least have a LinkedIn profile, if not research papers or appear in alumni directories, etc.

hedonova.io/more/about

They try to convince you that their Reg. D filing is the holy grail of their existence. It is the easiest, cheapest and quickest way to collect money from investors with the least amount of compliance.

Refer: investopedia.com/terms/r/regula…

Once you land on the website you are greeted by Esmee on the chat. That cute stock image seems rather familiar. 😃

She will schedule a call for you with their Investor Relationship Manager - Neel Aryan Birla! This is where the fun starts.

@neelaryanbirla (NAB), is the Head of Investor Relations and a Cambridge Graduate with an illustrious career in finance.

The problem?
👉 He has no LinkedIn account.
👉 He uses the same picture all across the web on various potentially paid/sponsored posts.

👉 He strolls around Paris however uploads stock photos of his "strolls" on Twitter. 🤣

👉 His Christmas market and "Snowy Paris" pictures too look very similar to someone else's.
👉 However, the biggest problem is NAB doesn't like video calls. He is either traveling or his camera is broken when in a call.

Anyways, I jumped on a brief (audio) call with our NAB guy, very convincing, and speaks with a thick Indian accent. I asked him about some of their startup investments, apparently SpaceX, and Swiggy is amongst the companies they have invested in.

However, there is nothing about these investments online. You'd imagine a fund investing in SpaceX would do some PR about it.
The second big 🚩 was when NAB told me that I could invest in crypto through USDT/BTC or ETH. Very interesting. 🤔

Also, last month they raised their min. investment size to $5K, when I invested it was $1K. I asked NAB about the fees, the website lists 10% performance fees and 1% management fees.

He shrugs the question saying, "uh we don't charge those yet they are just on the website."

The best part:

Me: "You call yourself a hedge fund, so how do you hedge your assets?"

NAB: "We hedge everything, all our investments are always hedged."

Me: "How do you hedge paintings, shrimp farms, litigation finance?" 🤯

NAB: "Ahh no, only crypto and currency are hedged."

My apprehensions started developing. I asked some additional questions about the fund, auditor, fund manager, the legitimacy of the fund, etc. This is my conversation, there is no private information here.

Answers 👇

What would be the next steps? I asked. I was told to fill up a "KYC" form on the website:
hedonova.io/kyc-india and I'd be good to go, I decided to put in $2K USD via crypto (USDT).

As you can see, the form asks for some basic information, and an ID number. No verification.