Lemox Review

As of December 2024, Lemox raised €2,700 and claims investors are already earning. Either someone found a money tree, or this smells funny. Let's dive in, shall we?

Lemox is a German investment platform run out of Frankfurt, Germany by Roland Furler that launched in October 2024 and solicits funds for real estate projects in Germany. The legal entity, Lemox GmbH. It’s a ‘broker of investments’ located at Opernplatz 14, 63013 Frankfurt am Main. A quick Google street view shows it's a corworking spaceoffering virtual office addresses. The official residency of the managing director Roland Furler is in Neuenburg am Rhein - 295km away from Frankfurt.

The company registry (registration number HRB 131820 B) shows they’re using the minimum investment capital of EUR 25,000. The company was incorporated in May 2023. Records show they got their own postal code wrong the first time around but fixed it. Mistakes happen I guess. Sole shareholder of the company is Marina Peters (born: Swoboda). Not much is known here other than she was born in and she also lives in Neuenburg am Rhein -a town of 12.482 people in rural Germany.

While Neuenburg is far away from Frankfurt, it's only 6 kilometers away from Müllheim. Which is relevant, because all their loan originators are based there: Magnet BCM GmbH, Pebako Projekte GmbH and Pebako Klemmbach Carree GmbH. All projects are separate, but all belong to the same company. At this point it is important to note, that Lemox does not openly declare any direct relationship with the loan originators it features. So, are they?

Marina Peters' (sole shareholder of Lemox) former business partner Dominik Köbelin used to work for Pebako. So how did her business partner land at Pebako? Maybe she got him a job there back in 2018, when someone - maybe her brother? - sharing her maiden name (Viktor Alexander Swoboda, born 23.12.1978) was the CEO. At this point we have the sole shareholder of the market place getting loans for a loan originator that used to be run by someone who's probably her brother. Not great. But who actually owns the loan originator?

Paul Peters. Wait a second. Marina Peters, Paul Peters… could they be related? To be fair, Peters is a pretty common name in Germany. So maybe an extended relative. Who was born within a year of Marina. So a cousin? Well, husband, cousin, person who got her brother a job, whatever, is actually the owner of not just Pebako but every single loan originator on Lemox. At this point it seems likely that every single loan originator on Lemox is owned by what we presume to be the husband of the marketplace owner.

I actually tried to find out more about Paul Peters but he shielded himself pretty well with a Switzerland based public limited company that doesn’t reveal much more than the office address. I did find however that he started a company called Theodor Projekt GmbH (which later on became Pebako), owned by Paul Peters AG und T & A GmbH.

T & A GmbH, his partner in this, was an interesting diversion. Apparently it's owned by Alexander Kuzmichev, born on March 10th, 1959 in Russia. And while the name sounds familiar, it’s not the Oligarch Alexey Kuzmichev who was recently arrested, because the oligarch is Alexey Vikorovich Kuzmichev, and our guy is Alexander Mikhailovich Kuzmichev. Our guy was probably the one that took part in the 1965 Russian Chess Championship. Nice. Maybe that explains why Paul Peters, Head of Pebako also has a Russian language LinkedIn profile where he manually translated skills? ... that at least would be the most benign explanation.

Let's take another look at the managing director of Lemox: Roland Furler. He is a property consultant at FHS Consulting. So someone who tells people what properties to buy. Which is pretty convenient, given now he tells people which property buyers they should give their money to. Which happen to be built by someone who appears to be the husband of the sole shareholder.

That does sound like a giant conflict of interest. People pay him to figure out what to buy, and then he pretends to run an independent marketplace that solicits funds that then get used to buying those properties. With everyone involved happening to live in the same village, if not even related.

Alright, so everyone’s related, there are no third parties and their claim of ‘transparent partnership’ is a complete lie. I mean, you could still invest if the conditions are right. Right?

At the time of writing, they have raised a total of EUR 2,700 for their projects. Despite that, they already feature three testimonials saying things like "Now, I am earning passive income from a property I never even have to visit!" Excuse me? Not a single project has been financed and this guy is making passive income already? Oh, come on.

And then there are the legal conditions. First, let’s take a look what Lemox promises: “Curated opportunities” and “transparent partnership”. In other words, lies. The partnership we covered, so what about the curation? The legally binding risk assessment document states: “Lemox does not check whether the individual information provided by the issuer to Lemox is correct in terms of content.” Ouch. But there’s more: “Investors should use the opportunity to ask the issuer questions via the platform” … uhm, given you guys all live next to each other, why don’t you ask the questions?

So what about the rewards? Lemox offers 9-11% for qualified subordination loans with no opportunity to sell them. If that wasn't bad enough: Lemox has a pre-insolvency enforcement blocking clause. That means that unless the company is insolvent, you have no realistic option to enforce the repayment of the loan. Guess what happens with qualified subordination loans in an insolvency though? You don't see a penny of it.

For those still thinking of investing in Lemox, the owner's former business partner captures the essence of what you’ll need in the headline of his LinkedIn profile: "I want to put my complete trust in God, for He is my only hope."