For little more than $1, the website goplayz.com offered prospective customers a five-day trial to stream “the best in entertainment.”
“Watch, listen, play, read as much as you want … whenever you want!” it said, listing a mix of obscure and popular games and movies.
Other GoPlayz landing pages promised a new iPhone or a Nespresso coffee maker worth hundreds of dollars to people who signed up and paid “only €1.” They featured an automatically checked box next to small text indicating the user agreed that their “membership will automatically continue unless I cancel it.” There was no mention of what else it included or how much it cost.
GoPlayz was among dozens, perhaps even hundreds of similar websites participating in a global internet scam, all affiliated with a firm called Dynamo Media. Although the company itself was registered in Cyprus, an investigation by the Toronto Star has traced the operation back to an unassuming office above a grocery store in Montreal.
Dynamo’s websites have left a trail of disgruntled customers, who say they were swindled by the promise of gifts that never materialized and unwittingly signed up for costly, almost impossible to cancel subscriptions to worthless entertainment offerings.
A collection of screenshots taken from GoPlayz. Like many websites affiliated with Dynamo Media, the site has since been taken down.
Toronto Star illustration
Business was booming. Dynamo reaped nearly $12 million in 2023 alone, according to internal data from Worldline and its German subsidiary Payone. Between the websites and Dynamo stood a network of intermediary merchants — apparent front companies — most of which were flagged internally by the payment processors as “high-risk” clients over concerns about their business.
Worldline and Payone terminated their relationship with some Dynamo-affiliated merchants over recent audits, including one by a European regulator that found companies were using the payment processors to run fraudulent subscriptions and other schemes.
Dozens of Dynamo-affiliated websites remained online as late as this spring. Dynamo Media’s public-facing website went dark in the course of reporting this story.
Dirty Payments shows how the Worldline Group, which describes itself as Europe’s number one payment processor, enabled dubious and fraudulent online transactions worth billions, facilitating large-scale scamming, controversial porn sites, prostitution networks, illegal casinos and possible money laundering operations.
The Star’s focus on Dynamo Media shines a light on an underbelly of online marketing, where authentic-seeming websites were in fact tentacles of an unscrupulous network accused of defrauding people from Canada to New Zealand.
One of the four entrepreneurs the Star found behind Dynamo broadly denied these accusations, but declined to answer specific questions. None of the others answered repeated requests for comments.
Garry Clement, a financial crime prevention expert and former Mountie, said subscription-based internet scams affect most Canadians at one time or another, but authorities have had little enforcement success. “Canada has become an attractive point for all kinds of criminal activity, mainly because of our inaction around enforcement penalties,” he said.
Garry Clement is a financial crime prevention expert and advocate, having once served as the National Director for the RCMP’s Proceeds of Crime Program.
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“Frauds have become so numerous in this country that it’s impossible for law enforcement to even tackle about 10 per cent — I would say if they’re tackling one per cent that would be probably a good day,” Clement said.
Audit flagged sites ‘linked to fraudulent subscriptions’
Worldline facilitates payments by credit card between customers and merchants selling products, whether it’s through online subscriptions or physical terminals in stores. Organizations everywhere use Worldline’s services, including the Ontario government when processing certain online payments.
Goplayz is just one of at least 160 internet domains from 36 different front companies that all tie back to Montreal’s Dynamo Media, the payment processor records reveal.
They also show that the payment processor terminated Dynamo merchants when audits raised concerns.
A damning 2023 audit by BaFin, a German financial supervisory authority, revealed glaring deficiencies in Payone’s money-laundering prevention systems that allowed it to develop a “conspicuous high-risk portfolio in its e-commerce business.”
These merchants’ websites, BaFin noted, were “linked to fraudulent subscriptions, phishing, and fake shops, among other things.”
BaFin did not name merchants in its public statement. However, internal company records show Payone terminated 10 Dynamo-affiliated merchants operating 40 websites, citing the BaFin audit as the reason. Worldline cut off 18 Dynamo-affiliated companies operating 79 websites in 2024, with a Worldline executive explaining the move followed “a German regulatory audit and the implementation of a reinforced risk control framework for the entire online portfolio.”
And three Dynamo merchants operating 12 websites were listed as former clients of German payment company Concardis, which was sanctioned by BaFin in 2022 to “ensure that the institution consistently complies with its obligations to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.” BaFin did not detail allegations against specific merchants.
Meeting minutes show that in 2021, Worldline approved the fast-track onboarding of six high-risk Dynamo-affiliated companies “prior to completion of full due diligence.” An internal risk-assessment team had recommended against it, describing the onboarding timeline as exposing the firm to illegally processed transactions and a variety of risks, including substantial financial penalties.
Payone said that, following the BaFin audit, it “immediately initiated enhancements to its risk framework, governance structure, and control environment.” Worldline said it “is committed to the best standards in terms of compliance and prevention of financial crime and has reinforced its resources in that respect.” It added that in “recent years and, in particular since 2023, Worldline has reinforced its merchant risk framework and terminated merchants not aligned with this framework.”
After media partners co-ordinated by EIC started publishing Dirty Payments stories, Worldline commissioned an additional audit over its remaining high-risk portfolio. The results are expected in October.
Neither Worldline nor Payone answered specific questions relating to Dynamo Media.
Inside a ‘subscription trap’
The Star and EIC collaborators traced the websites that were labelled as Dynamo Media properties in the payment processor data to a company in Montreal with the help of domain investigation platforms, which revealed that most of the sites shared the same unique identifier that businesses use for online advertisements. Most also shared the same set of servers. These steps uncovered hundreds of other related websites, suggesting Dynamo’s scale went far beyond their business with Worldline and Payone.
One of the sites on these common servers was dynamo-media.com, which is listed on LinkedIn as belonging to a Montreal company. The company’s founding documents, filed in Cyprus in 2014, list four shareholders: Jonathan Haber, Francesco Saltarelli, Nicolas Saltarelli and Jonathan Charrier. Each used the same Montreal address, a small office above an Asian supermarket on Jean-Talon Street West.
A Star reporter visited the office twice in June, finding no one to answer the door.
In 2018, all shares of the Cyprus company were transferred to a Canadian numbered company at the same Montreal address. This numbered company’s incorporation documents list only Haber and Francesco Saltarelli as directors. It was dissolved in February.
The stores’ management deny using deceitful sales tactics. But more and more disgruntled customers are demanding justice.
The stores’ management deny using deceitful sales tactics. But more and more disgruntled customers are demanding justice.
Dynamo’s website, before it went dark, described the firm as “a multi-level information technology company that specializes in high trafficked web properties.” On the surface, most of the other Dynamo domains seem to be selling Netflix-like subscriptions for movie streaming services, music, games, books and personal training.
Dynamo-linked sites such as GoPlayz have garnered scores of one-star online reviews, in which customers described “absolute fraudsters” and a “total scam.” Customers alleged the sites fooled them into subscriptions for poor content and did not address repeated cancellation requests.
The Star spoke to one individual who identified as a former Dynamo Media employee. They were granted confidentiality as they feared retribution and a negative impact on their career for speaking out.
The former employee said Dynamo lured customers into subscriptions with advertisements for popular movies that were not actually in their catalogue. When searching for advertised content, customers would see an error message saying the movie was not available in their jurisdiction.
In a study on subscription traps and so-called “free trial scams,” the Better Business Bureau (BBB) warned that fraudsters can avoid detection by credit card companies through “clean”-looking websites including pricing disclosures that may be hidden from alleged victims in the versions they accessed — often through deceptive online ads.
Former Dynamo co-owner denies involvement with scam sites
The Star reached by email Nicolas Saltarelli, one of the four men listed in the company’s 2014 Cyprus incorporation documents. When asked about dozens of websites that the internal payment processor data say are affiliated with Dynamo, he said, “I have had no dealings with the various other companies you mentioned below and have no knowledge of the facts that you are alleging.”
The former Dynamo employee said Nicolas Saltarelli was their main contact at the company in 2015.
Saltarelli dismissed any suggestion that he was involved with a network of alleged scam websites. “This is simply not true,” he said. “I have worked with many disgruntled employees in my life who are willing to do or say anything.”
Nicolas Saltarelli said he resigned from his role as VP Business Development with the company in 2016 and sold his equity in 2017, and as such “can’t speak to any of it as I have not been there.” He said he could not discuss the company’s activities prior to his departure due to a confidentiality agreement.
Francesco Saltarelli, Haber and Charrier did not answer the Star’s requests for comments.
Internal data from 2023 show that Wordline and Payone have facilitated the equivalent of roughly $11.9 million of transactions for 28 Dynamo Media-affiliated companies over a 12-month period. Dynamo financial statements from Cyprus show the company made about $16.4 million in profit between 2016 and 2019.
At least 45 Dynamo-affiliated domains remained online as of June, often displaying nearly identical home pages, with slight variations to the template. They advertised $6.99 five-day trials followed by subscriptions for $25.95 every 15 days.
Nearly all of them have since been shut down.