While the fintech firm was recruiting high-profile politicians, its owner was developing and promoting crypto products that crashed after launch
The founder of fintech firm Lanistar, Gurhan Kiziloz, and former UK defence secretary Sir Gavin Williamson make an unlikely pair.
Kiziloz is a designer clothes-clad entrepreneur with aspirations to become a billionaire, while Williamson is a soberly dressed former Conservative chief whip, defence secretary and education secretary.
Williamson, who was MP for South Staffordshire until parliament was dissolved on 30 May, signed up on 23 October as an advisory board member to Kiziloz’s fintech firm Lanistar, which has ambitions to become the next Monzo or Revolut.
Sir Graham Brady, who was formerly MP for Altrincham and Sale West and head of the Conservative Party’s backbench 1922 committee, also attended Lanistar’s offices for a meeting last year, according to former staff, who say he was being pitched a role as an adviser to the company.
Williamson is standing for the Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge seat in Staffordshire in the upcoming election, while Brady had stood down as an MP.
Williamson and Brady did not respond to requests for comment.
While Lanistar was trying to bring in high-profile politicians, Kiziloz’s businesses were also developing and promoting crypto products that crashed after launch, leaving their investors angry and out of pocket.
The crypto coins were developed and promoted from the offices Lanistar shared in London and Dubai with another company Kiziloz founded — the World Press Release Organisation — say former staff of both businesses.
Financial News spoke to nearly 20 ex-staff from Lanistar and WPRO who say they worked on developing or promoting a series of crypto coins under Kiziloz’s direction. That included Big Eyes coin, which claimed to have raised more than $40m from investors, but cratered immediately after its launch, leaving those who bought the coins with big losses.
FN also viewed messages from WPRO and Lanistar’s internal Slack channels where Kiziloz spoke about promoting crypto meme coins including Big Eyes, Dogetti, Elonator, Poorcoin, Beasterium and Dogemiyagi, which ex-staff say were developed and promoted from Lanistar’s London headquarters.
“We need to get back to basics and start making money from crypto,” Kiziloz wrote in a summer 2023 Slack message viewed by FN. “We need to have the coins ready in our hands and start marketing then I think we will pop it.”
Crypto is risky for retail investors, with research from the Bank for International Settlements in 2022 estimating that three-quarters of people who bought bitcoin suffered a loss. The Financial Conduct Authority has consistently warned the public of the risks of investing in crypto.
Fintech dreams
Kiziloz — who is known as G by staff at both companies — had big dreams of striking it rich through Lanistar, which he hoped would be the next UK tech unicorn with a valuation of more than $1bn.
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His profile on the company’s internal Slack account used to show a picture of a medallion that former staff say he wore, engraved with: “Today is 12/7/18 I WILL be a Billionaire by 12/7/23,” according to screenshots viewed by FN.
Kiziloz used a picture of a medallion as his avatar on the company’s Slack messaging system
Lanistar was launched in a blaze of publicity in 2020, with support from an array of social media influencers such as Belgium and Manchester City football star Kevin De Bruyne, Instagram model Demi Rose and Love Island contestant Amber Rose Gill. Representatives for Rose, De Bruyne and Rose Gill did not respond to requests for comment.
However, Kiziloz’s vision of Lanistar becoming the UK’s hot new digital payments challenger soured amid poor execution and a lack of funding, which in 2021 led to a mass exodus of staff who had not been paid for months.
Lanistar said in 2020 that it had received £15m in funding from Kiziloz’s family. CEO Jeremy Baber said in an interview last year with Fintech Finance News that Kiziloz’s cash injection was the company’s sole source of external funding.
“We manage that capital very carefully, simply because, at the end of the day, there is a finite amount,” he said.
Baber also said the company’s more than 40,000 payment card customers in Brazil didn’t make the firm money: “Cards don’t make money, that’s the reality of it.”
Following Lanistar’s missteps in 2021, Kiziloz turned to another money-making effort: creating and promoting crypto coins such as Big Eyes and Huh Token that left investors nursing losses, despite the aggressive marketing.
“I was very excited. But I tried to claim the tokens several times, without success”— Edson Silva, 61, from São Paulo, Brazil
Former staff of Lanistar and WPRO say Kiziloz was behind a long list of meme coins including Big Eyes, Huh Token, Dogetti and DogeMyagi.
The coins shared similar cartoonish branding, with Big Eyes coin represented by an anime-style cat character, while Dogetti plays on a theme of mafia Shiba Inu dogs and DogeMyagi uses a cartoon dog modelled on Mr Miyagi from the 1984 film The Karate Kid.
Ex-staff say the people who came up with the concepts for the cryptos, their developers and the people who wrote the white papers setting out the manifestos for the coins, worked out of Lanistar’s London and Dubai offices.
Social media accounts for the coins were also run from its Hammersmith headquarters, with posts on Twitter, Telegram and Instagram encouraging people to invest, former staff said.
The coins were also heavily promoted by WPRO’s staff using the same marketing strategy: flooding Google with news stories hyping them as the next big thing.
WPRO repeatedly threatened to write negative articles falsely accusing FN of racism and corruption during the process of reporting on this article.
Lanistar’s chief executive Baber told FN in response to requests for comment that Lanistar had “nothing but a business relationship” with WPRO.
“They produce news articles for us and have no other involvement other than they share some office space — separate teams and leadership. I run Lanistar Limited; Mr Kiziloz is only the founder and [ultimate beneficial owner] and has no operational involvement in the day-to-day running of the business,” Baber said via email on 29 April.
Investors burned
Simon, 46, a divorced father of two from the UK, said he spent £2,500 on Big Eyes coins after a friend suggested he invest. When the Big Eyes launch date came around, he said he had to spend another £200 on ether fees to get his coins.
However, the value of the £2,500-worth of coins he bought in the pre-sale plummeted to £70 immediately after the coin launched on 15 June 2023. His coins are now worth £6, he says — a fall in value of more than 99%.
The tokens were sold via websites for each coin, but with no indication of the people or companies behind the projects.
A second Big Eyes investor, Edson Silva, 61, from São Paulo, Brazil, said he never received the coins he paid around $500 for after seeing them advertised by influencers on YouTube.
Silva says from the marketing of the coins, he expected a return on his investment following their launch. Instead, he says he received nothing.
“I was very excited,” he told FN. “But, I tried to claim the tokens several times, without success.”
Another investor in an earlier Kiziloz coin had a similar experience. Daniel, a lawyer from Washington state in the US, says he invested around $3,500 in Huh Token in 2021. “I never received any confirmation emails or emails with instructions on how to claim the tokens, [they] simply vanished into thin air.”
Daniel said he bought into Huh Token’s marketing after he saw his brother make a lot of money from crypto and wanted to pick the next meme coin winner amid feelings of “sibling rivalry”.
“I am not a dumb guy, but I saw dollar signs and got in on the hype for sure,” he says.
Lanistar and WPRO
PR firm WPRO ran from the same offices as Lanistar and was closely connected to the fintech firm, former staff say. WPRO and its staff played a key role in marketing and advertising Kiziloz’s string of meme coins, former staff say.
Former staff say Kiziloz, who founded both companies, called the shots at Lanistar and WPRO, despite not being CEO at either.
Kiziloz was “the unofficial CEO [at WPRO] who was advising and directing the actual CEO”, one former WPRO worker said.
“WPRO had no real independence. What was said by Lanistar management, particularly G, just went,” another former WPRO employee said.
The two firms were closely linked, former staff say. One said WPRO was a “sister company” to Lanistar and the two firms were “intertwined in many ways”. The two companies shared an office-wide Slack channel, according to another ex-staffer, and shared an IT technician, according to a Slack message viewed by FN.
Both Lanistar and WPRO staff were asked to take part in a contest to write positive reviews of Lanistar on company comparison site Glassdoor, according to ex-staff and Slack screenshots viewed by FN.
Workers at both companies were offered up to £2,500 to write reviews of Lanistar on Glassdoor to try to boost its image.
“You guys all know we’re on our way to UNICORN status and this means we need to SHINE on all fronts,” an HR manager for WPRO wrote on Slack in March 2023.
After the contest, Lanistar’s Glassdoor rating jumped from 2.7 to 3.7, the WPRO HR manager told staff in a follow up Slack message.
“We are definitely on our way to UNICORN status!” they wrote, referring to Kiziloz’s desire to boost Lanistar’s valuation to $1bn.
The same manager said in another message celebrating a London office social: “Let’s all work together to achieve the company goals. Team Lanistar + WPRO.”
Kiziloz’s hype machine
WPRO, which was founded in December 2021, hired early-career writers and journalists.
Former WPRO staff say they were told they would be writing stories about the firm’s clients. However, the vast majority of their time was spent writing positive pieces about Lanistar or articles about crypto coins such as Big Eyes which were produced in-house.
The company’s handful of external clients included Ryan Bishti, the owner of the Cirque Le Soir nightclub in Soho. Former staff say WPRO wrote and distributed a string of positive articles about Bishti in 2022 for The Jerusalem Post, EuroWeeklyNews.com, Livemint.com and other sites.
“London’s ‘Brilliant Businessman’ Ryan Bishti is going from entrepreneur to mentor,” the headline of a 31 May 2022 piece in The Jerusalem Post read.
The articles ran after Bishti was charged in November 2021 with bribing a police officer, but before his conviction at Southwark Crown Court in September 2023.
Jerusalem Post, Livemint.com and EuroWeeklyNews.com did not respond to requests for comment.
WPRO also wrote a series of articles about businessman Yasam Ayavefe, extolling his business credentials and plugging his hotel in Greece. Lanistar said in 2020 it had received an investment from Ayavefe’s Milaya Capital, but later said the deal had fallen through.
Crypto hype
Former WPRO writers say their main role was producing articles about Kiziloz’s crypto coins. Ex‑staff say they were instructed to write three to six articles a day promoting the coins, often through what one former staffer called “clout chasing” — comparing them to more established cryptos.
Ex-staff say they were also instructed to play upon investors’ fear of missing out, by suggesting the coins could be the next big thing. The goal, they say, was to deluge Google News with positive articles about Kiziloz’s coins and to bury any negative coverage.
“We flooded every garbage financial publication we could with sh– articles about Big Eyes,” said an ex-WPRO writer.
In one 2023 Slack message seen by FN, Kiziloz told staff he expected them to be putting out more than 180 stories per day promoting Lanistar, various crypto coins, a crypto online gaming site and Ayavefe’s hotel.
The stories featured no branding linking them back to WPRO and didn’t carry bylines of the company’s writers.
There was also no indication the articles were written by people connected to the coins — Kiziloz did not want them connected to him or Lanistar, according to former staff.
“G wanted his name nowhere near Big Eyes,” said an ex-WPRO worker familiar with his thinking.
One WPRO writer who accidentally placed a Lanistar link in a Big Eyes story was fired, according to multiple former staff.
The articles were placed on sites such as Yahoo Finance and Deccan Herald by another team, who distributed 30-50 stories a day when the operation was in full swing, according to one person familiar with the process. WPRO paid websites between $20 and $500 per article, the person said.
A spokesperson for Yahoo Finance said the site had no connection with WPRO. Examples shared with it by FN of WPRO stories promoting Big Eyes were from a publisher it had not syndicated from since June 2023; the articles had been taken down following FN’s request for comment, the spokesperson said.
Deccan Herald did not respond to a request for comment.
Invoices seen by FN showed WPRO regularly paid thousands of dollars to news and tech websites for hosting its pieces promoting the coins.
A 21 February 2023 invoice to WPRO from Newswatch TV billed WPRO $5,000 for 150 articles placed on its site; a 13 February 2022 invoice billed WPRO $7,500 for 150 articles placed on Tekedia.com.
“We flooded every garbage financial publication we could with sh– articles”— Ex-WPRO writer
A Tekedia.com representative told FN that WPRO owed it money and it could not get a response to its requests for payments. “All their emails are not working. They [owe] us money and we want to sue them,” the representative said via email on 14 April.
A WhatsApp thread used by the WPRO team showed how prolific the operation was. For example, on 8 February 2023, WPRO placed 38 articles on outlets.
“Dogecoin, Shiba Inu dips as Big Eyes Coin smiles to bank with largest pre-sale history — $24 million and counting!” was one headline on EuroWeeklyNews.com published on 8 February 2023, according to the WhatsApp thread.
The same day, a piece on Livemint.com that the WhatsApp thread showed was placed by the WPRO team asked: “Has Big Eyes Coin’s Presale Primed It to Match Ethereum and Solana’s Success?”
Kiziloz’s most successful token was Big Eyes, which ran a pre-sale period of nearly 10 months, claiming to have raised more than $40m from investors.
One ex-WPRO worker said when Big Eyes was an initial success, all the promotional muscle of the firm was thrown behind it: “When it started to make money, there was a ludicrous push where all WPRO staff focused their entire effort on Big Eyes.”
The pre-sale period for Big Eyes began in August 2022, but the coin didn’t launch until June 2023.
However, within days of Big Eyes’ 15 June launch, its value had fallen by nearly 100%, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com, wiping out its investors.
Tough times
After Big Eyes crashed, people stopped investing. Kiziloz and the team then developed and launched several new projects to try to find another hit, former staffers say.
In a message posted on Slack during the summer after Big Eyes’ launch and seen by FN, Kiziloz urged staff to try to get another of the firm’s coins to take off.
“We need to get back to basics and start making money out of crypto,” he wrote. “This is our only option out of this s– hole.”
Kiziloz listed a series of the company’s crypto coins including Elonator, Poorcoin, Beastereum and Dogemiyagi. “One of these is going to pop,” he said.
However, none did and WPRO and Lanistar started to struggle financially, former staff said.
“Big Eyes launched and money stopped coming in, then everyone was being let go,” said a former WPRO worker.
Mass firings
Lanistar and WPRO fired more than 30 staff on 1 August last year, according to former staff. They said the companies blamed lack of funds for the firings.
Other staff were let go in the following months, leaving a skeleton crew still working for WPRO and Lanistar, mainly in Dubai, former staff say.
Up to 50 workers have still not been paid thousands of pounds owed to them by Kiziloz’s companies, former staff say.
Lanistar went through a similar cycle of not paying staff and laying them off in 2021.Those ex‑staff successfully took it to an employment tribunal, and received their unpaid salaries.
Staff at both companies are now employed as contractors, making it more difficult for them to pursue their lost earnings.
Former staff owed money by Kiziloz’s companies say they are not optimistic about getting paid. One ex-WPRO staffer says Kiziloz was “very evasive and unresponsive” to questions about when they would get paid. Another says they thought there was “no chance” they would receive the money they are owed. Some former WPRO staff said they had still not been paid as of 14 June.
What next for Kiziloz & Co?
Williamson was appointed to Lanistar’s board as the fintech firm and its sister company WPRO faced difficulties paying their staff. The former defence secretary has been paid in Lanistar shares, according to a 23 October entry by Williamson in parliament’s Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
There is no suggestion Williamson knew anything about Kiziloz’s crypto projects.
The company previously handed out thousands of shares to a string of footballers, models and reality TV personalities to promote it on social media.
Lanistar has frequently boasted that it is on the way to unicorn status; CEO Jeremy Baber told Fintech Finance News last year that the company expected to hit a valuation of $1bn to $2bn in 2023.
However, amid its current financial woes and having never taken on an external funding round, its actual valuation is in question. There is also little apparent prospect of a float or sale that would allow Williamson and Lanistar’s many other shareholders to realise a return.
While Kiziloz dreamed of becoming a billionaire, some of the investors in his coins had humbler ambitions. Edson Silva from São Paulo in Brazil said he invested in Big Eyes to save up to buy his own house, but did not receive the coins he paid $500 for.
“It wasn’t a large amount, but it left me feeling sad… I make small investments, with the hope of saving money to buy my own house. I’m 61 years old and I still haven’t been able to buy my house,” he said.
