Christian Steinkeller Scam Allegations Fact-checked (2024)

Eliminalia, who was also hired to represent well-known OneCoin resellers, was working as a representative for a fraudulent cryptocurrency business that defrauded investors out of billions of dollars. Currently facing prosecution in Italy are three brothers: Aron, Christian, and Stephan Steinkeller. They may have profited millions of euros from the scheme. In 2021, an organization gave Eliminalia 38,000 euros in payment. A request for remarks was sent to the Steinkeller brothers, but they did not reply.

Eliminalia: A Laundromat Known for Its Criminal Past 

‘Blackhat practices’ used by a Spanish reputation management organization help unscrupulous actors erase their past. 

• Spanish reputation management Eliminalia operates in the growing disinformation-for-hire business, helping corrupt politicians and criminals hide their pasts.

• Over 1,400 clients, including hundreds convicted of drug trafficking and fraud, have used the business to “clean up” their reputations.

• Eliminalia uses deception and journalist harassment to silence customer dissatisfaction.

• The company employed fake copyright infringement alerts to circumvent “right to be forgotten” laws protecting consumers from harmful online content.

Two are known drug dealers. One is suspected of money laundering for a prostitution ring. Another supplied the Syrian government with American hardware. Three more Bitcoin fraudsters were accused of costing investors billions.

Eliminalia, a reputation management company that claims to “erase your past,” has served over 1,400 customers, including those who have been convicted or suspected of crimes.

Eliminalia, a Barcelona corporation, has cleaned up its reputation for 10 years.

The wood-paneled coworking space it shares with two dozen other tenants in Portal de l’Ngel’s shopping sector has helped the company become a worldwide disinformation-for-hire leader.

Diego “Didac” Giménez Sánchez, a 30-year-old Spanish businessman in Georgia, is Eliminalia’s official leader. Sánchez has a broad network of businesses, including a Ukrainian surrogacy organization under investigation for infant trafficking.

He may have formed this network with Jose Maria Hill Prados, who was convicted of sexually molesting him as a child. Spanish investigators suspect Hill Prados may manage Eliminalia’s reputation despite his absence from Eliminalia’s records.

Eliminalia’s vast digital influence was revealed by thousands of leaked papers obtained by the French non-profit Forbidden Stories and shared with OCCRP and many partners. The data reveal the corporation’s vast variety of dishonest tactics to silence client concerns, expanding previous findings.

The documents show that Eliminalia, which changed its name to iData Protection S.L. in late December, harassed journalists with copyright and privacy laws, misled search engines into hiding material, and faked stories. The company has also started businesses abroad with criminal clients.

Eliminalia is part of a growing disinformation industry that helps criminals and kleptocrats hide their pasts, researchers say.

“This whole mechanism, this commission of money and reputation laundering, this everyday kleptocracy, depends today on transnational professional intermediaries,” said Oxford University transnational kleptocracy researcher Tena Prelec.

“You have a whole series of professional service industries, such as public relations agents, lobbyists, lawyers… who help in this repurposing of shady people, businesses, and governments as respected businesspeople and philanthropic cosmopolitans on a global scale.

Eliminalia’s legal counsel won’t answer questions about this project since they include client business secrets. Journalists were accused of bias.

“The vast majority of the questions’ orientation and content shows a partial and dishonorable approach,” stated. 

What Is the Eliminalia Leak?

The French group Forbidden Stories and other media partners were made aware of a reputation management company’s public disclosure of about 50,000 papers. A group of over a hundred reporters worked together to investigate the disinformation-for-hire industry as part of the Story Killers project.

Among the details are names, contracts, and other legal documents signed by Eliminalia’s clients in fifty different countries.

This is the first chance for journalists to examine one of the biggest “black hat” reputation management companies in the world up close.

For media professionals, this is the first chance to examine one of the biggest “black hat” reputation management companies in the world up close.

Services Offered to Criminals

As a self-made businessman, Sánchez founded his first reputation management company in Spain when he was just twenty years old. Before moving his headquarters to Ukraine, where he hired writers to produce reviews and fake court notices for the media, he founded several other businesses in the years that followed.

A surrogacy organization called Subrogalia paired Spanish parents with Ukrainian women who might become their future mothers. This was one of Sánchez’s many business ventures. Hill Prados, who was imprisoned in Spain for sexually abusing Sanchez as a child, possessed the corporation’s Ukrainian company despite serving as its public face, according to documents obtained by OCCRP.

Their names were withheld, as they were not allowed to speak to the media, but OCCRP was notified by two Spanish law enforcement officials responsible for cyber threats that they thought Eliminalia had been given to Hill Prados. Nevertheless, OCCRP was unable to independently verify the claim since they withheld details on their evidence.

As part of a network spanning nine different nations and at least 54 organizations, Eliminalia has been linked to Hill Prados and Sánchez for the past ten years. Regarding this story, they both declined to respond. 

The website homepage for Eliminalia.

Sánchez has said in the past that he started Eliminalia to refute claims that he was personally a victim of Hill Prados.

The Secret of Success, his self-published autobiography, quoted him as saying, “It tortured me so much to find mention of what had happened in my childhood on the Internet.” After a few weeks of learning how to eliminate references, I was able to erase much of what I had written. So I started Eliminalia after seeing there was a market for it.

Part of Eliminalia’s business is from ordinary people who want to have derogatory information about them taken down from the internet, as part of an expanding effort to improve “right to be forgotten” rules. Reporters, however, found that many of the reputation manager’s clients were criminals who took advantage of Eliminalia to circumvent the same restrictions.

Records that were leaked internally show that Eliminalia has worked with over 1,400 customers, including hundreds of individuals who have been prosecuted or convicted of offenses ranging from money laundering and fraud to drug trafficking and sexual assault. 

Eliminalia clients: Aron, Stephan, and Christian Steinkeller were exposed as Eliminalia clients, a renowned unscrupulous reputation management organization. Eliminalia uses compulsion, intimidation, and fraud to remove bad client information from the internet.

OneCoin: The Steinkeller brothers were top OneCoin Ponzi scheme earners and promoted it through “One Dream Team” branding. Lawyers accused them of stealing millions from investors.

Legal Issues: The Steinkeller brothers and 14 other OneCoin promoters were accused of money laundering and fraud by Italian authorities. OneCoin was marketed in Italy despite crackdowns, leading to more investigations and arrests.

The MetFi Ponzi scam, pushed by former OneCoin promoter Stephan Steinkeller, is accused. It recruits users on social media with lucrative offers without permission.

Warning: Investigations warn against MetFi and related programs due to unsustainable salary structures and financial risk. People should report such programs to authorities and shun questionable financial advice. 

Conclusion

Reputation management is rife with deceit, as Christian Steinkeller’s role in the Eliminalia controversy shows. Using Eliminalia’s immoral methods, Christian, Aron, and Stephan attempted to cover up their involvement with the OneCoin Ponzi scam. The Steinkeller brothers maintained their image by seeking sanctuary in services like Eliminalia despite facing court charges and scrutiny.

As the Eliminalia leak has shown, there is a shadowy side to reputation management. The firm helped more than 1,400 people—including those with drug, money laundering, and fraud—hide their criminal records. More stringent rules and supervision are desperately needed in the online reputation management industry to stop the abuse of vulnerable people and the continuation of illegal actions, as this disclosure has shown.

Associating Christian Steinkeller with Eliminalia is a sobering reminder of the gravity of unregulated methods of managing one’s internet reputation and the necessity of bringing those responsible to justice. To prevent abuse and maintain the integrity of information online, it is crucial to manage one’s reputation in a transparent, ethical, and legally compliant manner.