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From CCN

Millions of dollars are estimated to have been sunk by investors seeking a piece of the ‘Russian treasure ship’ ICO fronted by a South Korean ‘treasure-hunting’ firm.

According to South Korean police, it has been tentatively concluded that about 2,600 people invested around 9 billion won or slightly over US$8 million in Shinil Group which claimed to have discovered a shipwreck containing gold worth US$130 billion.

As initially reported by The Korea Herald, investors also poured money on a token known as Shinil Gold Coin which the South Korean firm claimed would be backed by the treasure from the wreckage of the Russian warship known as Dmitrii Donskoi.

The Russian warship was run aground off the South Korean coast by her crew following severe damage during combat with the Japanese in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war.

Per the police, the investor losses could be larger since the estimates they have come up with are based only on the trading accounts which they have so far managed to track. “If we find more related accounts or confirm cases in which investors used cash, the amount could go up,” the Sophisticated Crime Investigation Unit of Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said.

There is also a possibility that the victim count could fall according to the Seoul police: “The number of victims could go down, however, if we exclude cases where the same person transferred money using different accounts.”

As previously reported by CCN, plans by the Shinil Group to conduct an ICO were announced in mid-July after the company posted a video on YouTube alleging that had managed to find the Russian warship’s wreckage containing 200 tons of gold coins and 5,500 boxes of gold bars.

Suspicions immediately arose primarily because this was not the first alleged discovery of the Russian warship.

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By Dawn McCarty - Bloomberg

The story of the doomed luxury liner R.M.S. Titanic proved so alluring that divers were searching for the wreck seven decades after it sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Once it was found in 1985, fanfare over retrieved relics led to exhibits around the world and a blockbuster movie. But the company holding the rights to the ship and 5,500 artifacts has been mired in debt, placing the future of its collection in the hands of a bankruptcy court.

On Thursday, a judge weighed plans for auctioning the largest trove of Titanic memorabilia, which already is drawing the interest of U.S. hedge funds, Chinese investors, British museums and award-winning director James Cameron.

Among the items is the bell a crow’s nest lookout rang to warn the bridge of an iceberg ahead; window grills from the first-class dining area; a passenger’s three-diamond ring; and a suitcase full of clothes owned by William Henry Allen, an English toolmaker immigrating to America.

Titanic, once the biggest ocean liner ever built, sank almost two miles below the sea on its maiden voyage in 1912, killing more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers.

“It’s just sad to see that great ship of dreams, and the pieces of it, bounced around like an orphaned child,’’ said David Gallo, an oceanographer and former head of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who co-led an expedition to the wreck in 2010.

At least three groups are vying for the artifacts from the current owner, Premier Exhibitions Inc. It’s the successor to a company once owned by a wealthy Connecticut auto dealer, who bankrolled a French exhibition that retrieved artifacts from Titanic for the first time in 1987.

The wreck was discovered two years earlier by oceanographer Robert Ballard, who refused to remove anything from the site, which is 12,000 feet (3,700 meters) under water. Atlanta-based Premier organizes Titanic displays around the world, including at the Queen Mary hotel in Long Beach, California, the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, and the Guangdong Museum in China.

In recent years, the business was expanded to include exhibitions such as animatronic dinosaurs, human cadavers and bugs, along with sets and props from the Saturday Night Live TV show.
 

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By Lida Filippakis - Balkaneu

Whilst diving with tourists near the Croatian island of Pag, Vedran Dorušić, the president of the Diving Tourism Organisation at the Croatian Chamber of Economy and the rest of the divers came upon a wreck of a sunken Roman ship dated most probably to the beginning of the 1st century BC.

"The latest archeological finding in Croatian waters was met with understanding from the Ministry of Culture, to truly conduct, in cooperation with diving centres, the placement of video surveillance and other technical protection measures along with the application of new manners in presentation and tourist promotion.

With this specialized form of tourism and cultural offering, diving enthusiasts are on the front line when it comes to protection of the environment and are extremely aware of the importance of sustainable tourism", Dorušić said. It is believed that this "fresh" attraction will beef up diving tourism which has been on the rise in past years thanks to the nearly 180 diving centres that operate in Croatia.

Croatia Week reads: "The boat was lying completely on the sea floor and was slowly falling apart. As estimated 600 pieces of amphora were on the boat." It is possible it sank while seeking "shelter from the bura winds in the bay of Simuni on Pag, which, according to some traces, was a Roman harbour."

By Wooyoung Lee - UPI

Seoul police have raided the homes of officials involved in a local cryptocurrency exchange, in an investigation into a scam linked with a Russian shipwreck. Police searched and confiscated evidence at the residences and the prison cell of the former head of the cryptocurrency exchange, according to Kyunghyang Shinmun.

Seoul police launched an investigation earlier this month to look into the potential links between the shipwreck discovery and cryptocurrency trade. Shinil Group claimed last month to have found a 113-year-old Russian shipwreck that held gold bars and coins worth billions.

The wreckage belonged to the Russian naval cruiser Dmitri Donskoi, which sank off South Korea's eastern Ulleung Island during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905.

The company issued a new crypto currency and attracted investors with a pledge to return benefits from the "treasure ship."

From Forces.net

An investigation has launched into the fresh allegations of looting from a number of British Second World War wrecks in Asia. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said he was "very concerned" to hear claims that remains of four ships lying off the Malaysian and Indonesian coasts have been targeted.

The Mail on Sunday said HMS Tien Kwang, HMS Kuala, HMS Banka and SS Loch Ranza were targeted for their metal. The sunken wrecks are thought to be the final resting place for hundreds of Royal Navy sailors and civilians from WW2.

It comes after six wrecks, including Royal Navy battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, were feared to have been damaged or destroyed by scavengers. Mr Williams said the Government "absolutely condemns" the unauthorised disturbance of any wreck containing human remains.

"I am very concerned to hear any allegations of incidents of Royal Navy wrecks being plundered in the Far East," he said.

HMS Tien Kwang, a submarine chaser, and HMS Kuala, an auxiliary patrol vessel, were carrying hundreds of evacuees when they were attacked by Japanese bombers near the Indonesian Riau Islands on February 1942.

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By Marex

A crown court in Newcastle, UK has sentenced a Dutch salvage company to a fine of nearly $320 million for illegally scrapping a WWI-era shipwreck in the Celtic Sea. 

In August 2016, the Royal Navy vessel HMS Severn was on patrol around the Isles of Scilly when she was tasked to investigate the movements of the Dutch-registered salvage ship Friendship. Severn's crew found the Friendship lifting steel and copper from the bottom with a grapple. This scrap came from the wreck of the SS Harrovian, a steamship that was sunk by a German U-boat during WWI.

The Severn launched a boarding party, and when the crew came aboard the Friendship, they found that the vessel's master did not have a salvage license for the $115,000 in metal on board. They put a scratch crew together, impounded the vessel and sailed her to the port of Fowey, where she was handed over to the UK Maritime Management Organization.

Prosecutors pressed charges against the Friendship's captain, Walter Bakker, and shipowner Friendship Offshore BV for three unlicensed salvage operations at the wreck site. In the course of the trial, Bakker admitted that he did not have the relevant marine licence and showed how he had manipulated the vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) in order to avoid detection.

After an 18-month trial, the prosecution won their case and secured steep fines and penalties for the owner. The master also received a small fine of about $2,600. 

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By 9News

Daryl Weathers remembers trying to pull men from the sea off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands after a US Navy destroyer hit a mine left by the Japanese following the only World War II battle fought on North American soil.

The explosion, which ripped the stern off the USS Abner Read, also covered many of the men in oil, which prevented some from being rescued.

“They were so slippery, you couldn’t get ahold of them,” the 94-year-old Weathers said this week from his home in Los Angeles.

The remaining 250 crew members made the ship watertight, and it limped back to the West Coast for repairs. Only one body among the 71 men killed was recovered. Nearly 75 years later, scientists using multi-beam sonar have discovered the 23-metre stern about 88 metres below the Bering Sea.

The scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Delaware found it last month during a research mission funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The researchers confirmed the discovery with a remotely operated craft, which provided high definition video in real time to those on the research ship.

“To hit success is obviously extremely joyous for everybody. There’s lots of cheering you know, it’s like scoring a touchdown,” said Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist with Scripps.

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From Korea Joongang Daily

Police issue travel ban on Shinil CEO for defrauding investors.

The Korean authorities are ratcheting up their investigation into Shinil Group, the company that claimed to have found a sunken Russian shipwreck, as key figures in the firm allegedly pulled off a cryptocurrency racket that promised to pay investors in sunken treasure.

Seoul’s Gangseo District Police issued a travel ban Monday on Choi Yong-seok, the CEO of Shinil Group, and others associated with the company for allegedly plotting to encourage investors to buy its own cryptocurrency by reimbursing them with gold from the ship, which Shinil estimated was worth around 150 trillion won ($131.8 billion).

The police are expected to summon the head of the company and other related individuals. Experts and some local media outlets raised doubts over the claim, and the CEO himself admitted that there is no firm evidence that the ship contained anything of value in a media briefing held last week.

Despite the lack of evidence, the group attracted tens of billions of won worth of investment by launching its own cryptocurrency, called Shinil Gold Coin. In return for the investment, the group promised to pay investors with gold from the ship.

This point prompted the Financial Supervisory Service to begin its probe into the company. Behind the investment scam was Yu Ji-beom, head of an affiliated Shinil Group based in Singapore.

He spearheaded the establishment of a cryptocurrency exchange called Donskoi International Exchange and uploaded postings regarding the shipwreck on a blog and Instagram account.

Yu has previously been convicted of real estate fraud, according to his acquaintances.

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