Maximus Obumneme was pressing his phone when an email notification popped up. It was an email from a car auction website, Old Merchant, advertising various cars with prices listed on each. That was in November 2023. A few days after the first message from Old Merchant, Obumneme received another email from Quality Assurance Autos (Qa Autos), another company involved in car auctions. A day after he had received the Qa Autos email, Obumneme began receiving multiple messages from both Qa Autos and Old Merchants advertising cars for auction to him.
“After those two messages, I began receiving multiple emails from both Old Merchant and Qa Autos,” said Obumneme.
Maximus Obumneme is a Nigerian businessman who resides in Lagos. He is an avid automobile enthusiast who constantly upgrades his collection. Obumneme was captivated by what he saw on the email and ultimately selected four cars from Old Merchant that fit his budget.
“I kept receiving emails about cars from two companies named Old Merchant and Qa Auto. Being someone who is interested in cars, I always changed my cars, and I always used Auction Export, a company based in the United States and Canada, and I never had problems dealing with them, So, with what I saw on Old Merchant and Qa Autos, I decided to visit the websites, and I saw four cars that cost $12,740 on Old Merchant that I was interested in and decided to go for them.”
Obumneme didn’t know it, but he was dealing with a prolific and notorious car sale fraudster involved in defrauding unsuspecting individuals from some West African countries interested in buying or auctioning secondhand (used) cars from the United States. Using email newsletters from his websites, as well as social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, the fraudster promotes his business to enthusiastic car buyers, concealing his true intentions.
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In order to find out who is behind Old Merchants and Qa Autos and its operation, a Google search was first conducted on the business name, Old Merchants, and analysis was also conducted on the website.
The phone number listed on the website, connected to WhatsApp and used for communication with Obumneme, was then verified with TrueCaller, a smartphone app for identifying telemarketers and scammers. The search revealed that the phone number was registered by Alexander Rudsky.
For Qa Autos, it was discovered that an agent named Olga Binkovska-Abraham registered the car auction business as a limited liability company in Florida on May 17, 2023. A Google search on the name Olga Binkovska-Abraham first led only to an inactive Facebook account and also brought up links to Qa Autos registrations on various auto websites.
An LC amendment filed and signed by Binkovska-Abraham on May 20, 2023, included a phone number. A reverse phone search using NumLookUp, an information search platform, identified the owner as a Ukrainian woman named Olia Binkovska-Abraham based in Florida and not Olga Binkovska-Abraham as alleged, according to what was filed with the Florida Department of State Division Corporation.
Quality Assurance Auction, a company that has closed down, came to light during investigation into Qa Autos. The company was also registered by Alexander Rudsky; the name previously shown as the proprietor of a phone number connected to Old Merchants.
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Further findings revealed that two companies, both named Quality Assurance Auction Quality, were registered with the Florida Department of State Division Corporation.
One, Quality Assurance Auction, registered as a limited liability company in October 2018 and was legally closed as a business on May 17, 2023, while the other, also named Quality Assurance Auction, was filed in September 2016 and its status is inactive.
The Florida Department of State Division Corporation records show that Quality Assurance Auction was filed in 2018, but online records indicate the company has operated as an auction company since 2013, with Rudsky as the owner. Further searches reveal that Quality Assurance Auction has a Nigerian subsidiary registered with the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) as Quality Auctions Nigeria Limited (Qa Auctions). The Nigerian entity registered as a private company limited by shares, operates as a general merchant and trading company, with Rudsky, Eric Gasper (Qa Auction’s Customer Support Officer) and Nigerian businessman, Otubu Adedimeji Samuel, as directors as of March 1, 2014.
Additionally, Qa Autos and Qa Auction display the same company logo on their websites and social media accounts. Qa Autos was registered using the same agent address as Qa Auction, which filed for dissolution on May 17, 2023, the same day Qa Autos was officially registered as a business.
A message sent to Olia Binkovska-Abraham, the lady who registered Quality Assurance Autos, via WhatsApp and the email on the document regarding Qa Autos was not replied as of the time this report was filed.
Who is Alexander Rudsky?
In an investigation conducted over a period of three months in trying to understand who Rudsky is and his business operation, it was gathered that Rudsky is a 52-year-old businessman based in the United States who has been into the car salvage and auction business for more than 10 years. Interviews conducted with his former employer, business partner, employees, and victims portrayed him as someone who impacted their lives negatively and made them question transacting financial business online.
The story about Rudsky’s victims, his relationship with former business partners, how his car auction business began, and legal battles has never been told.
Little is known of Rudsky’s history and life before setting his sights on West Africans as a destination for his car auction fraud business, but the first sighting of Rudsky’s business online was in 2013, and his activities online show a man with a track record of fraud and mastery of the car auction business.
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However, piecing together Rudsky’s personal life story was hard, as it was observed that some information about Rudsky had been deleted online. This investigation was able to find out that Rudsky also operated three more car auction websites – Salvage King, Monster Exports and Quality Car Guys.
Apart from being known as Alexander Rudsky, online records and court documents also show that he is also known as Alex Brown Rudsky, Alex Brown, and Alex Rudsky.
Despite operating for more than 10 years on the internet, an image of Rudsky‘s true identity to his victims has remained a mystery—even whether his business operation involving Old Merchant and Qa Autos is run by one person or more than one.
While this investigation was able to confirm Rudsky operated with a team in the United States, Nigeria, and Ghana with Qa Auctions, it remains a mystery if he is operating Old Merchant and Qa Autos alone and how he operated Monster Exports and Salvage King with more than 15 victims losing money running into thousands of dollars.
Rudsky is an enigma with a checkered history. It is hard to understand how Rudsky has evaded prosecution despite being known to the law and numerous complaints against his fraud car auction business going as far as 2014 targeting people in the United States and West Africa.
Despite his criminal activities known to some U.S. agencies based on complaints filed by victims, Rudsky has continued to operate unhindered. Three messages sent in July, September and October 2024 to Jonathan Stratton, Assistant United States Attorney with the State of Florida, a state where Rudsky registered Quality Assurance Auction, Monster Exports and Salvage King as business entities, were not responded to.
Stratton’s name and email address were listed alongside Karen Allen, a staff member of U.S. Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV), as officials of the Complaints Board that could help with cases involving Rudsky.
Allen, Section Supervisor of the Motor Vehicle Fraud Unit at the Bureau of Motorist Services Support in the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, responded on July 29 to an email inquiry sent to FLHSMV’s fraud unit. When asked if the agency was aware of Rudsky’s operation and why he had continued operating for over 10 years despite numerous online complaints from alleged victims, Allen stated that the unit had not received any submitted or signed complaints involving Rudsky.
Michelle Kramer, an Assistant Attorney General at Florida Office of the Attorney General, whose email was also listed among those to be contacted on the Complaint Board, did not respond to two messages sent to her on October 8 and 24 about Rudsky and his businesses.
The United States Justice Department also did not respond to an email inquiry about Rudsky sent on October 24.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was also asked about Rudsky in an email inquiry sent on October 24. The agency was asked if it was investigating Rudsky and why he had continued to operate for more than 10 years despite multiple complaints by victims to the agency of them being defrauded by businesses. In a response sent on October 25, the FBI said it declined to comment.
The story of how Rudsky has been able to operate for long without being identified by his victims and prosecuted by the United States government despite numerous fraudulent complaints against him is a cautionary tale of cyberspace. While Rudsky seems to have understood how to operate his fraud enterprise on the internet and avoid prosecution, he has been able to make a lucrative living by knowing how to target, defraud, and disappear without being found by his victims.
The victims
Obumneme said this was his story. He was a regular car buyer from the United States until Rudsky came along and defrauded him. He never heard of Rudsky before until he was defrauded – a mistake he said was due to him researching the seller.
Online Rudsky portrays Rudsky as an expert on the car business. His main marketing vehicles for his services are: WhatsApp, websites and social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly known as Twitter).
To his customers unaware of his scan activities, he is an expert on car sales, while to his past business associates and customers who fell for his fraud, he is a criminal who defrauded and deceived them.
While Rudsky’s identity was visible during his running of QA Auction, the other websites that followed Salvage King, Monster Exports, Quality Car Guys and Old Merchants provided no information regarding who was operating them.
The five websites had a business location and phone number for calling and another number used for WhatsApp to transact with customers.
Rudsky is listed as VP for sales on Qa Auctions (inactive) website, alongside more than 15 staff members and dealers, according to information found on WayBack Machine, an internet archived website.
The Qa Auction website was registered on August 21, 2013, according to information on the website found on WhoIS. The website appeared to have ceased operation in 2022.
Femi Alabi had no idea that clicking on a link from a social media advertisement would lead to him being defrauded of $19,950 by a U.S.-based car auction website. Alabi wanted to buy a new car for his wife, Dorcas, and while considering several options, he saw an ad on a Facebook page called Salvage King promoting a car auction sale. Drawn in by the message, he clicked the URL included in the post.
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On the website, Alabi spotted a 2021 Toyota Highlander priced at $19,950 and contacted the seller through WhatsApp. He was instructed to make the payment to a Wells Fargo (U.S. bank) account listed on the website. In April 2022, Alabi completed the payment, but Salvage King soon went silent, blocked him, and to this day has refused to deliver the car.
Salvage King was incorporated by Alexander Rudsky as a limited liability company on July 19, 2021, according to information found on Florida Department of State Division Corporation. However, the company ceased operation on May 17, 2023, making Salvage King currently a non-existing company.
While searching the internet to get more information about how he could get his money, Alabi, in an interview, said he came across a U.S. based website, Complaints Board, that allows customers to lodge a complaint against a company that wronged them. He saw multiple complaints about Rudsky, QA Auction, and Salvage King and found out that he had been dealing with a fraudster.
The whole situation was frustrating, Alabi said. “I wonder how he had been evading capture for years. I even got a call from an official from Florida in March of 2024, after my complaint online and we spoke for a long time about what had happened to me. She promised to get back to me, and up to now she hasn’t got back to me till date. She also told me to get a lawyer to pursue the case with Salvage King and Alexander Rudsky and I wonder how they expected me to do that from Nigeria.”
A message sent to an investigative research assistant with the Florida Office of the Attorney General, Rochelle Morgan, who had contacted Alabi, was not delivered.
On the Complaints Board website, there were more than 20 more complaints by people from the United States and various other African countries who have fallen for the Rudsky fraud.
One of the complaints posted on the website was a 2015 post made by a Ghanaian based in the United States, Zakaria Abukari, who said Alex Rudsky defrauded him of $10,500 for a 2014 Toyota Camry he paid for in 2014.
Another person, a Nigerian who only identified himself as Adebiyi, said he was defrauded of $70,000 through Salvage King between November 2021 and March 2022.
Another Nigerian, Olatunde Alabi, lodged a complaint that Alexander Rudsky defrauded him of more than $43,000 in 2021 through Quality Assurance Auction.
Alabi, a car dealer based in Lagos, had wanted to get two vehicles for his customers and had contacted Quality Assurance Auction after coming across its promotion on Facebook and Instagram.
In a telephone interview from his base in Lagos, Alabi said he slept in a jail for three days due to his customers reporting him to the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) despite also being a victim of Rudsky.
He had paid $14,200 for a 2016 Toyota Highlander in June 2021 to Qa Auction and communicated with a man who introduced himself as Eric and a lady called Jennifer.
He said, “I have always gotten cars from the U.S. My problem started when a customer, who is a younger friend of mine from the United States, contacted me to get him a 2016 Toyota Highlander. Normally I buy from Copart and IAA, which I registered with. On those companies’ websites, I couldn’t get the kind of car he was interested in, so I decided to try Qa Auction, and they told me they had the car I was looking for.”
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Alabi’s business with Qa Auction did not only stop with the Toyota Highlander. He had been told by a Qu Auction representative that the car he paid for was already in the process of being sent, making him order a 2020 Camry for another customer that cost $29,800.
After about two weeks of the first purchase, Jennifer, according to Alabi, sent him a dock receipt, which he tried using in the tracking. However, the car said to have been delivered to Sallaum Lines, which was supposedly on the ocean transportation company website, was not delivered.
“I sent both of them a message, and they didn’t respond and later blocked me,” Alabi said during the interview.
Alabi further disclosed that he and his customer tried informing the bank he had transferred the money through. “When I discovered that I may have been defrauded, I quickly told my customer to inform the bank he transferred the money through, but was told by the bank there was nothing they could do since the money had left their bank.”
Alabi’s effort to get his money led to him contacting the US embassy and asking if he could speak with an FBI official, which they linked him with.
The FBI officer, according to Alabi, told him that the agency only does government-to-government interaction and was advised to inform the EFCC, who would then contact them about his complaint against an American business that had defrauded him.
“Through my lawyer, I petitioned the EFCC in Lagos, and they told me to come and defend myself. They told me that since the fraud matter happened outside of the country, they could not do anything about it,” said Alabi.
He further said he was taken aback by the EFCC response, since the EFCC normally helps the FBI with cases involving internet fraudsters in Nigeria.
It was observed that Rudsky ran Salvage King and Qa Auction simultaneously, as both companies’ websites were active during the same period and ceased operations in the same year. The Salvage King Facebook page stopped being updated in April 2022, three months after Qa Auction’s Facebook page was last active.
Monster Exports, one of the auto auction companies registered under Rudsky’s name in 2017, alongside Qa Auction, has attracted the most fraud complaints, according to analysis conducted across five consumer complaint websites. The company filed an article of dissolution in October 2020 with the State of Florida.
Additionally, the business was registered as a private company in the United Kingdom in 2015. However, it was dissolved in 2017 after two years.
Mohammed Farouk Anka, a civil servant from Delta State, was among those who fell victim to the Monster Exports car auction fraud. In 2020, he lost $6,300 after bidding for a 2010 Lexus RX 350 through the company’s website.
The five consumer complaints and online review websites include Complaints Board, Ripoff, Yelp, Scampulse, and SiteJabber, with more than 40 complaints and at least $500,000 lost to Rudsky fraud schemes.
To see a list of names/usernames and amounts conned by auto salvage and auction businesses registered by Alexander Rudsky, click here. (Note: This is not a complete list of individuals Rudsky’s companies deceived.)
“Rudsky Qa Auction started operation with a stolen customers database“
Before establishing Quality Assurance Auction in the United States and Nigeria, along with Salvage King and Old Merchants, Rudsky worked as an employee at Salvage World, a company involved in car auctions and salvage. Mark Alexopoulos, who managed Salvage World at the time, responded to a WhatsApp inquiry about Rudsky, saying, “Rudsky destroyed my family business and my life; we lost millions. The guy is an animal and a piece of garbage.”
According to Alexopoulos, Rudsky stole his customer database to start his business after he fired him for causing problems within his company.
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“He killed me. He took 10 years of my life. I am 52- years -old right now. Rudsky destroyed me. My business and family life. I have no idea how he had been able to invade prosecution. This issue led to me going to jail. I spent 16 months in jail, and my fiancé at the time left, though three years ago I got remarried. This guy sent me down a black hole of death. He is a bad person. You can’t understand the evil of this man (Rudsky).”
Alexopoulos’s family started a car business in 2008 called Salvage World, an auction platform. Alexopoulos developed software to market the company through Google, using a strategy that generated numerous keywords and attracted many customers.
He said he was introduced to Rudsky by a friend who spoke in glory about Rudsky’s work as a good salesman who did mortgages for banks.
“I lost millions of dollars because of Rudsky,” he said. “When I hired him, everything was fine, but at the end of 2012, he started acting erratically. In April 2013, I had Alex Rudsky arrested for attacking me and another person in our office, and I kicked him out of my company. But afterward, he used someone in our call centre with backend access to our database to steal over 120,000 customer emails and phone numbers. I took him to court, and the judge ordered him not to contact any customers, but he didn’t care about it.”
Rudsky did not respond to questions sent to him through the phone found on Old Merchant, which is registered in his name, about the allegations made against him by Mark Alexopoulos.
One of the individuals who would suffer when Alexopoulos lost the client database to Rudsky in 2016 was Aliyu Aruna. Aliyu changed his mind about purchasing cars from the car auction firms he had previously intended to buy from after receiving an email from a website that specialised in car salvage and auctions. He received the email when he was finalising the process of establishing a salvage and auction car buying and selling business in the US.
His plan was to buy cars from verified car dealers selling salvage and auction cars. But the email he received from Quality Car Guys enticed him, thereby forcing him to abandon sellers he had planned on doing business with and going with Quality Car Guys.
According to him, “The company defrauded me of more than $62,000. I wanted to get an Escalade and a Mercedes Benz,” said Aliyu in a telephone interview conducted via WhatsApp. “Quality Car Guys was not part of the company I was looking at when starting the business, but they had prices on their website that enticed customers. It was an effective strategy, and a lot of people fell for it. Who doesn’t want to buy something cheap or even $1000 or $2000 less to increase their profit margin? He knew this strategy would be especially effective in the African community and targeted them. Africans are looking for opportunities. We hustle a lot and are always seeking ways to make bigger profit margins,” he added.
Aliyu said he reported to the FBI and was told that the amount Quality Car Guys defrauded him of ($100,000) was not up to the amount that would make them pick up the case. “I tried looking for other victims so that it could get to $100,000, but I was only able to come up with $82k with mine and the other two victims. I reported to a lot of government agencies, and nothing was done about it.”
Another victim, Emmanuel Ugochukwu Ifedi, said Quality Car Guys defrauded him of about $20,000, and his business collapsed due to the fraud.
“I reported to the FBI and was told that the agency only goes after fraud cases that are $40,000 and above. I am only in business now because my uncle through his friend in Arizona gave me a fresh loan of about $35,000 to start all over again. I’m still paying this debt till date”, he said.
Additionally, in 2016 and 2017, Aliyu and Ifedi complained to the FBI about Quality Car Guys via the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Centre. They both reported receiving no response until 2020, when an agent contacted them to inform them that their complaints were under investigation and to request supporting documentation, including invoices and payment receipts.
Although they submitted the requested documents, both said they have not received any further updates on the case.
Rudsky appeared to have deployed a different approach with the way he started Quality Car Guys. Unlike others which were all registered in Florida as a business entity, the invoice sent to customers by Quality Car Guys after payment showed the State of Maryland Custom stamp.
Rudsky’s name also did not appear on Quality Car Guys Better Business Bureau, an American organisation that focuses on consumer protection and industry self-regulation page. Rather, it showed a certain Jennifer Kovalev as principal under the organisation contact information.
However, it was also observed after further findings were conducted that Quality Car Guy appeared to be a fictitious name registration under Quality Assurance Auction in the State of Florida by Rudsky.
Note: A DBA (Doing Business As) registration, sometimes referred to as a fictitious name registration, permits a company to use a name other than its official business name. A DBA may also be referred to as an assumed business name or trade name.
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A phone number that Ifedi said a staff member of Quality Car Guys had used in communicating with him was subjected to IPQS, an OSINT tool used for phone number verification. It showed that the phone number was registered to Alexander Rudsky when a reverse name lookup was conducted on the number.
Rudsky and Qa Auction entered the Nigerian market in 2014, using Nairaland, a popular Nigerian forum, as their initial platform to promote the business. Two Nigerian employees of Qa Auction actively praised Rudsky’s work and success, encouraging Nigerians to patronise the company. One employee, identified only as Francis, posted advertisements from September 12 to September 17, 2014, describing the types of vehicles available and directing interested buyers to the Qa Auction website. Francis did not respond to messages sent via WhatsApp.
Another employee, known as Tola, praised Rudsky and Qa Auction in two articles on Nairaland in October and November 2014. However, when contacted through a number listed on a Qa Auction leaflet on Nairaland, Tola claimed no knowledge of the articles. In a WhatsApp interview, Tola confirmed working with Rudsky and Qa Auction in 2014, but when asked further about their operations in Nigeria, he became incoherent. Tola eventually disclosed that the company had severed ties with Rudsky after discovering he had cloned the website and was directly engaging with clients.
Samuel, the Nigerian director at Qa Auction in Nigeria, confirmed in an interview that his firm ended its relationship with Rudsky after discovering that he was failing to deliver cars and secretly dealing with clients. He further revealed that he shut down the business upon learning of Rudsky’s actions and that Rudsky also defrauded him out of over $20,000.
His business relationship with Rusky started online in 2012 and 2013 after the fraudster bought cars for him from the United States.
According to him, “I was also defrauded of more than $20,000. He initially got some cars for me, which led to us starting a conversation. During a trip to the United States around that time, I told him I wanted to buy more cars, and he introduced his company to me. We decided to establish a company in Nigeria to give the business a local presence. I was actively running the business here until I noticed delays with cars arriving in Nigeria. When I realised this, I decided we wouldn’t accept payments from any new customers until the outstanding cars arrived. Some vehicles eventually came, but others did not,” he said.
“As it became clear they wouldn’t deliver all the cars to Nigeria, I reached out to find out why—and discovered my line was blocked.”
However, a month before Tola posted on Nairaland, a Nigerian, Samuel Akintola, who had visited the Qa Auction office in Lagos, warned against doing business with Qa Auction in Nigeria, and Rudsky, stating that they might be running a fraudulent car auction business.
Another former dealer that worked with Rudsky Lagos office, Victor David, was surprised when he was told he was being contacted about Alexander Rudsky and Quaaction. David responded incredulously, asking if Rudsky was still involved in auctioning and selling cars.
Information about David’s business relationship with Rudsky had come to light when, during an Internet search about Rudsky, a Facebook screenshot of Victor’s post about Rudsky was uploaded by an X user, @clliday. The user had posted a screenshot of Victor’s post on Facebook about Rudsky in 2018.
The screenshot showed David on October 26, 2015, disclosing that Qa Auctions had offices in Lagos. Abuja and Asaba. In a follow-up post four years after the initial post, Victor said in a post that he wasn’t proud of Rudsky.
David, in the telephone interview, said it had been long since he heard from and worked with Rudsky. Stating that during his time with Rudsky, he was taken to court by a customer and did not know Rudsky’s whereabouts or work for his company any longer.
The Qa Auction operation extended beyond Nigeria and also had dealers in Ghana. One of such dealers was Newton Quarshie. Quarshie’s name and phone number appeared alongside other Nigerians and Ghanaian that worked with Rudsky on the Qa Auctions website (inactive) as the company Ghana dealer. Note: Information on the website was accessed through screenshots captured by internet archive platform WayBack Machine.
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When contacted through WhatsApp, Quarshie denied working with Qa Auction and Rudsky, despite his name, phone, and image appearing on Qa auctions website as their Ghanian dealer, stating he had no idea how his details got on Qa Auction.
Quarshie claimed he had no relationship with Rudsky, and Qa Auction was suspect.
Rudsky’s action has negatively impacted a lot of people. Samuel, the Qa Auction director asked, startlingly, if Rudsky was still involved in the vehicle auction industry when he was informed that the journalist had called because of him.
Explaining the effort he took in trying to expose Rudsky and bring him to justice, Samuel disclosed that his effort was futile.
He further described Rudsky as dangerous during the interview, saying he ought to be imprisoned and in jail.
Samuel knows too well why Rudsky shouldn’t be running a car auction website.
