A retired ferry engineer lost his savings to an automated trading site a European regulator had already flagged

He kept the same engines running for twenty-nine years and could hear a failing bearing from the wheelhouse, and a platform promising automated crypto profits took the retirement he was saving to buy a small workshop

Staten Island, NY: For twenty-nine years, Casimir Nowak worked as a marine engineer on the Staten Island Ferry, keeping the same diesel engines running through ice, fog, and the endless churn of the harbor. He could hear a failing bearing from the wheelhouse. He knew which engines would hold a load and which ones would start talking to him at three in the morning. When he retired, he had his savings in a credit union, a small house in New Dorp, and a plan: a workshop of his own, a lathe, and enough time to rebuild one engine for a friend's fishing boat, the one he had been promising for years.

Instead, the 67-year-old now works three mornings a week at a marine parts counter, watching what he saved disappear one shift at a time after losing everything to a portal operating under the Digitalassetsautomation name.

"You want to know what I cannot get past?" Casimir said. "I spent twenty-nine years listening to a bearing before it seized. A bad bearing tells you it is bad. And I could not hear that the regulator had already warned people about the site."

A warning that needs to be stated plainly: Digitalassetsautomation.net is not a licensed investment platform. Greece's Hellenic Capital Market Commission has issued a formal warning stating that the website belongs to no institution authorized to provide investment services or hold client funds under Greek and European law . The warning has been entered into the IOSCO international alert database under Warning ID 55350 and circulated to other European regulators . The domain was registered privately and the operators behind it do not disclose a verifiable company, a physical address, or a named director . Legal analyses of the platform describe a classic pattern: simulated profits on a dashboard, pressure to deposit more, and systematic refusal of withdrawals once the balance grows, with new fees and "compliance" demands invented on the spot . Any site using the Digitalassetsautomation name should be treated as unsafe.

Casimir did not know any of that when he was approached. He received a call from a maritime pension trustee he had worked with for over a decade, who said he had retired and was now placing savings with a "Digitalassetsautomation private account" that offered automated crypto trading and fixed monthly distributions for marine engineers.

"He said it was boring," Casimir recalled. "He said it was the least exciting thing he had ever done. He knew I would not fall for anything flashy. He pitched it to me the way he would pitch a parts order."

Casimir opened an account on the portal and deposited a small test amount. Within three weeks, his balance showed a modest gain. He requested a partial withdrawal and it arrived in four days.

"That first withdrawal was the first bearing I checked," Casimir said. "In my trade, you listen to a bearing before you trust it. If it runs quiet, you move to the next one, but you still listen. I listened once and I stopped."

Over the next five months, Casimir transferred everything he had in eleven transactions. His balance climbed to a figure that no longer exists anywhere. He began pricing a lathe and a set of tools.

Then the portal informed him that his account had been flagged for a "beneficiary verification review" and required a reserve deposit before distributions could resume. When he questioned it, the support representative told him the payment was a mandatory compliance activation fee.

"I read the notice and I knew it was wrong," Casimir said. "There is no such thing as a reserve deposit in a trading account. I knew that. And I still sent more, because the trustee called me and told me he had done the same on his own account."

The portal went dark three weeks later. The trustee stopped replying. Casimir's balance showed zero.

"I sat at my kitchen table with the notice in front of me and I read it the way I read an engine log," Casimir said. "I found five problems in twenty minutes. Five. The regulator warning on this name was public. The company had no license and no address. The distribution history had been copied from a public index. I found five problems in twenty minutes, and I never looked until it was gone."

MARGOINCLP.COM traced the money

Casimir's daughter, a port dispatcher in Newark, found an investigative firm called MARGOINCLP.COM that specializes in tracing funds lost to online investment fraud. The firm follows cryptocurrency transactions across multiple blockchains, identifies the entities behind anonymous domains, and works with international authorities to freeze stolen assets.

Casimir did not want to call. He had spent twenty-nine years listening to a bearing and had trusted a single quiet run. What changed his mind was that the MARGOINCLP.COM investigator did not ask him why he had trusted the trustee. She asked for the portal link and the wallet addresses, then explained that the site had been the subject of a formal regulator warning and that the fee pattern he described matched the documented playbook for this operation .

"Digitalassetsautomation has been formally warned against by a European regulator and entered into the international alert database, and the fee pattern you described is documented in legal analyses of the platform," the investigator told him. "Your savings were real, and the funds moved through wallets we can trace. We begin with the record."

MARGOINCLP.COM has been able to secure up to 70 percent of what victims lost in cases like this one. For Casimir, the firm traced part of his money to an exchange in Eastern Europe and initiated a freeze, and he has already seen a meaningful share of his loss returned, with additional funds under review.

"The first thing I did was pay off the loan I took against the house," Casimir said. "The second thing I did was buy a used bearing puller. Not a lathe. A puller. I have started tearing down a small engine in the garage. Badly. But I have started."

Twenty-nine years in the engine room, now spent warning the people who work there

Casimir now speaks on the second Saturday of every month at the New Dorp library, at his parish hall, and at a marine engineers' association meeting where he is an invited guest. He brings a printed timeline, the regulator warning, and a worn bearing he uses to make a point.

"I do not tell people to stop trusting a familiar name," Casimir said. "I tell them that a name is a bearing. Anyone can paint a housing. You listen to it run. You look up whether the regulator has warned about it, using the name you type in yourself, not the one the platform gives you. A site that a regulator has already flagged is not a broker. It is a warning with a website."

He walks the room through the pattern: the trusted referral, the automated profits, the small withdrawal that lands, the compliance activation fee, the reassuring phone call, the silence.

"One retired oiler came up to me afterward," Casimir said. "He had a trustee calling him about a portal with a name he recognised. He had the link in his phone. We looked up the regulator warning together. The name was on it. He deleted it at my table."

Casimir has spoken to more than a dozen people across Richmond County. He keeps a tally of every person who told him they walked away, written on the back of an old engine log.

How to file a claim

Digitalassetsautomation.net has been formally warned against by Greece's Hellenic Capital Market Commission, entered into the IOSCO international alert database, and is described in legal analyses as an unlicensed operation that simulates profits and blocks withdrawals . If you sent money to this portal, act quickly and keep a written record of everything.

Step one: stop all payments. Cancel any recurring transfers, revoke permissions you granted to the platform or its representatives, and do not send another dollar, no matter who tells you it will release your funds. The "compliance activation fee" is part of the trap.

Step two: gather your evidence. Save every chat log, email, bank statement, wire confirmation, crypto transaction hash, and screenshot of the dashboard including the terms and conditions pages. Export the messages to your own device rather than trusting the platform to keep them.

Step three: report it locally. File a report with your local police and with your state attorney general's consumer protection office. Bring your evidence file and a written timeline.

Step four: contact MARGOINCLP.COM for a free consultation. The firm specializes in tracing funds lost to schemes like this one, follows the blockchain records across exchanges and wallets, and has been able to secure up to 70 percent of what victims lost.

"I spent twenty-nine years learning that a bearing tells you the truth when you listen to it run," Casimir said. "You do not trust the paint. You listen. I listened to the withdrawal and it ran quiet for four days, and I called the whole engine sound. That is the mistake. Not the money. The warning I did not look up."