‘Worthless tokens’: The crypto coin, a chicken kebab shop and the missing millions

Twice-jailed serial fraudster, former assistant tax commissioner Nick Petroulias, and his long-term associate, Hussein Faraj, a bankrupt chicken kebab shop owner, are being investigated over fraud allegations relating to their Australia-based cryptocurrency company.

The NSW Crime Command’s Cybercrime Squad told this masthead they were “aware” of the company NuGenesis, which was also co-founded by a businessman previously convicted of bribing foreign officials.

Former assistant tax commissioner Nick Petroulias, chicken kebab shop owner Hussein Faraj and the logo for their NuCoin.Credit: Michael Howard

“[We] are unable to comment on ongoing investigations,” a police spokeswoman said.

Allegations include that millions of dollars of investors’ money has disappeared and that the trio used Hezbollah bank accounts to move funds. Scoffing at these claims, Faraj blamed them on his younger brother, with whom he is currently in a Supreme Court property dispute.

Hussein Faraj, 40, is an undischarged bankrupt who runs Chicken Licious, a kebab shop in Rockdale. On his Facebook page, he lists himself as the “CEO and Cofounder at NuGenesis”, a cryptocurrency company he established in August 2021, as well as the president of the United Shia Islamic Foundation.

According to its website, NuGenesis operates in the crypto sphere as “a decentralized blockchain that uses Artificial Intelligence to power its operations”.

NuGenesis began offering its crypto token, NuCoin, in November 2021.

Angry investors have told this masthead, “We have been left holding a bag of worthless tokens.”

One well-known businessman and his partner, who invested $100,000 in late 2021, have been chasing Faraj for years for the return of their money. In January, they received a threatening call from Faraj. “Just wait. I told you I am coming after you, you piece of shit …. one by one I am going to wipe youse out.”

In the phone message, Faraj also boasts that he has “buried” jailed US cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried and that he plans to do the same with his disgruntled investors.

“I was the reason why that whole crime that was in America got taken down,” Faraj told this masthead about the downfall of Bankman-Fried.

In early 2023, Faraj told NuCoin investors they had been defrauded by Bankman-Fried’s US crypto trading firm, Alameda Research. Faraj said he had personally uncovered Bankman-Fried’s fraud and that he had rejected a $US40 million bribe not to expose the “crypto counterfeiting racket”.

Described as the “Bernie Madoff of crypto”, Bankman-Fried was sentenced in 2024 to 25 years in jail. He was also ordered to forfeit $US11 billion.

Employees in NuGenesis’s Lebanon office say they were offered “a platinum card of 1,000,000 coins” in return for IT work. But none have received any payment, and Faraj has stopped returning their calls, one employee told this masthead.

For two years, his younger brother Hassan has been making public allegations that NuGenesis is a “scam”. Under the Twitter handle “NUGENESIS SCAM”, his younger brother says Faraj has “made a website and created a fake coin”.

Hussein Faraj outside his Rockdale chicken shop.

Posting photos online purporting to be of his brother’s black Bentley outside his newly renovated home in Rockdale, his younger brother says Hussein has “used the crypto money to benefit his own luxury lifestyle”.

Hussein Faraj rejects his brother’s claims, saying: “One day he will wake from whatever it is he is going through.”

A lengthy investigation by this masthead can reveal that Petroulias and Faraj have presented false documents to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to establish a front company to take money from people investing in NuGenesis.

“It’s just been a nonsense ride from the beginning,” said one investor, who provided this masthead with a November 2021 financial agreement that listed Techno Group Enterprises as the agent for NuGenesis for the purchase of their crypto tokens.

Former lawyer and ex-National Rugby League commissioner Jim Hall had no idea that he was currently listed with the corporate regulator ASIC as the sole shareholder and a former director of Techno Group Enterprises, the company used to sign up investors.

Hall said he had never lived at the listed address, which is Nick Petroulias’ family home in Melbourne. Nor had he heard of the other directors, one of whom was Petroulias’ brother, who had previously received a suspended jail term for obtaining government benefits in the names of long-dead infants.

The postal address given to ASIC is that of Petroulias’ on-and-off partner of many years, lawyer Despina Bakis.

Techno’s current director Gregory Steaven Vaughan has previously admitted in a corruption inquiry that he was often asked by Petroulias to be a dummy director of companies secretly controlled by his friend.

In 2018, when asked at the Independent Commission Against Corruption if he was aware he was currently a director of Techno Group, Vaughan said: “Am I? I’m not aware of that.”

In April 2024, Vaughan posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he’d been appointed the “Chief Executive Officer of NuCoin, the NuGenesis ecosystem flagship.” However, there is no mention of this role on his LinkedIn profile.

Nick Petroulias’ on-and-off partner of many years, lawyer Despina Bakis.Credit: Sam Mooy

“They’re using different names so people don’t know who they are,” the whistle-blowing younger brother told this masthead.

Two of NuGenesis’s key personnel not only have criminal convictions but they have also used aliases on the company’s promotional material.

“Honestly, it doesn’t matter who I deploy, who I get. I look for the best people in every single field,” Faraj told this masthead. “I need their skill set. I don’t care who they are. I don’t care what they’ve done.”

The man of many names

One of those is NuGenesis’ chief legal and strategy officer Nicholas James Dimitrios Peterson, better known as Nick Petroulias. Arrested in 2000, the then 32-year-old Petroulias sparked one of the biggest internal fraud investigations in the history of the Australian Tax Office, where, as assistant tax commissioner, he had helped taxpayers minimise their tax.

In 2008, he was jailed for a maximum term of three years and two months for providing confidential ATO information for cash. NSW Supreme Court Justice Peter Johnson said Petroulias had acted with “impropriety and deceit” while working in a position of trust.

He was later investigated by New Zealand authorities for becoming a director of companies in that country while in jail in Australia.

Nick Petroulias, photographed after a facelift procedure in Lebanon.

In 2014, he was bankrupted. In his statement of affairs filed with his bankruptcy trustee, he described himself as a “disabled pensioner” with debts estimated at $104 million.

But it was onwards and upwards for Petroulias, who, despite being bankrupt, once again set up companies in New Zealand. It was in 2016 when Petroulias, using one of his aliases, “Nicholas James Piers”, incorporated a company in New Zealand. Its directors included Hussein Faraj and Petroulias’ romantic partner, Bakis.

The complex company structure was to hide a series of bogus property dealings with members of the Awabakal Local Aboriginal Land Council in Newcastle.

In October 2022, the ICAC found that Bakis, Petroulias and two members of the land council, Richard Green and Debbie Dates, had engaged in serious corrupt conduct through a dishonest scheme involving the false sale and development of $12 million worth of Aboriginal-owned land across the Lower Hunter. Petroulias received more than $1 million, some of which went to Bakis and Green.

Faraj, who was photographed accompanying Petroulias to the inquiry, was not the subject of the investigation, although his role in being a director of several front companies created by Petroulias was raised.

A graphic of Nick Petroulias who has changed his name to Peterson and is passing himself off as the legal officer of NuGenesis. 

Criminal charges have been recommended against Bakis, Petroulias and Green. A brief of evidence was provided to the DPP in October 2024. The prospective charges against Petroulias include fraud offences, corruptly receiving commissions, aiding and abetting misconduct in public office and the offence of conspiracy to defraud.

The commission is awaiting the DPP’s decision on whether prosecutions will commence.

There was an awkward moment during the ICAC inquiry in July 2018 when Petroulias, decked out in prison greens, appeared before the corruption inquiry via an audio-visual link from Silverwater jail.

The undischarged bankrupt had been arrested by police while driving his luxury BMW in Burwood. The car was owned by one of the dummy companies fronted by his friend Vaughan.

Police say they found counterfeit banknotes in the glove box. Petroulias, who had changed his name to Michael Felson, handed over a current New Zealand driver’s licence in the name of Nicholas James Piers.

But it wasn’t just Petroulias who’d been using false IDs. His partner Bakis, who had been acting as a solicitor for the land council as well as several of Petroulias’ corporate entities, had also been using fake IDs.

The commission heard that Bakis had run up a string of speeding and parking fines in Sydney’s inner west but had signed statutory declarations nominating “Daphne Regina Diomedes” as the person responsible.

“Mr Petroulias was behind this,” she said, adding that Petroulias had obtained for her a false European passport in the name of Daphne Regina Diomedes. The passport was used as proof of identity for her false Tasmanian driver’s licence in the same name.

Despina Bakis’s fake ID tendered at ICAC under the name ‘Diomedes Daphne Regina’. Credit: ICAC

“Well, how on earth does that happen, Ms Bakis?” she was asked. “Mr Petroulias goes overseas with a photo of me and gets a passport. It’s not terribly hard,” she said.

The corruption inquiry also heard that Petroulias had opened bank accounts using his partner’s false name Diomedes. Petroulias was also found to have operated a Macquarie Bank account in the name of Johan Latervere, who had died in May 2013.

“Ms Bakis lacked any semblance of credibility as a witness. She was unreliable and dishonest,” the final report found. Petroulias did not give evidence.

There was no corruption finding against Faraj, who is currently using Bakis to represent him in his legal stoush against his brother.

Under the name Michael Nicholas Felson, in October 2018, Petroulias was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, served by an intensive corrections order, over the counterfeit notes and licences. He told this masthead recently that it was all a mistake and that he was just holding $300 worth of counterfeit notes while he waited for a detective to come back from holidays.

The previous year, also under the name of Felson, he was convicted of corruption offences relating to his Commonwealth superannuation and was ordered to repay $21,292.

In 2016, the man of many identities was fined and lost his licence for driving with “illicit drug present in blood”. That was under the name of Nicholas Peterson.

Last year, again under the name of Felson, he was convicted and fined for breaching an apprehended violence order against a woman he said was his dancing partner.

Formerly a lawyer, Petroulias’ criminal history prevents him from obtaining a practising certificate.

He denied that he was providing legal advice to NuGenesis under the alias Nicholas Peterson. But when asked what his title was, Petroulias replied: “Legal counsel.“

The international man of mystery

“I don’t know who you are talking about,” said Hussein Faraj when asked about Muzammil Abbas. This masthead then pointed out that Abbas is listed as president and chief operating officer of NuGenesis.

Abbas is, in fact, Mozammil “Mozu” Gulam Abbas Bhojani. When NuGenesis was set up in mid-2021, Bhojani was serving a sentence of two years and six months by way of an intensive corrections order for bribing Nauruan officials to grant favourable phosphate deals for his company, Radiance International. He was convicted of bribery in this matter in 2020.

NuGenesis chief operating officer Muzammil Abbas is in fact Mozammil Abbas Bhojani.

Radiance International caused a scandal within the Home Affairs Department when it was revealed that while the Australian Federal Police were pursuing him for the millions of dollars he made over the crooked Nauruan phosphate deals, Bhojani’s company Radiance International continued to secure multi-million dollar offshore processing contracts in Nauru from the Australian government.

Corporate documents show that the only shareholder in NuGenesis is NuGenesis OU (the Estonian term for a private limited company). The four shareholders of the Estonian parent company are Faraj, his wife Nivine Khanafer, Mozu Bhojani’s wife Syeda Fatima and his brother Imran, who took over Radiance International following his brother’s arrest in 2018.

While Faraj was reluctant to discuss Bhojani’s role in NuGenesis, Petroulias was more forthcoming. He said he was one of Faraj’s partners in the business and that he’d helped bankroll the operation with a $30 million investment from family and friends. “Mozil, the Indian guy” was one of the founders, Petroulias said.

Faraj’s bank records indicate that Radiance International made 11 deposits totalling almost $700,000 into Faraj’s bank account in the three months leading up to Christmas in 2021.

Thousands of dollars were also coming in from investors for silver and diamond NuGenesis memberships. One woman who invested $45,000 in December 2021, is now in jail for kidnapping and extortion.

Bank records for this three-month period show that funds went on house renovations, the purchase of two Bentleys, and payments to Petroulias and another key NuGenesis person, Luay Mohsen, the chief technology officer, who is currently running NuGenesis’s operations in Dubai.

The Bentley-driving bankrupt

“I dont lie and I dont ever brake (sic) the law,” Faraj said in a text message to this masthead.

In NuGenesis’s promotional material, Faraj says: “I have secured over 7 billion dollars of international contracts and designed several decentralised financial platforms”. He also claims to have spent nine years in “law enforcement”.

A Bentley parked outside Hussein Faraj’s renovated Rockdale house.

This was far from the truth. His “law enforcement” history was working as a transit officer with Railcorp. In a 2018 personal injury case, he described that job as “just watching the TVs and monitoring what’s going on in the network”.

Faraj had been seeking more than $450,000 in economic losses, saying he’d been “unable to return to his chicken cooking duties in Chicken Licious” due to shoulder injuries sustained in a car accident.

However, his claim and credibility were severely damaged when surveillance videos emerged showing he could “conduct his chicken shop activities with little or no difficulty”.

District Court Judge Judith Gibson was satisfied that his collapse in earnings wasn’t because of his injuries but “because he has been pursuing speculative business activities which have failed”.

Faraj told the court that one of those unsuccessful ventures involved the sale of Aboriginal land. Within weeks, Faraj’s failed Aboriginal land deal, which involved Petroulias, would be spectacularly picked apart at the corruption inquiry.

Undeterred by previous setbacks, Faraj started NuGenesis in mid-2021 and launched its crypto token, NuCoin later that year.

Faraj went bankrupt in November 2023 with debts of $4.55 million. There is no mention of NuGenesis or any of the money that came in from Radiance International in Faraj’s statement of affairs to his bankruptcy trustee. Faraj told this masthead he had sold one of the Bentleys and that the other one was owned by the Estonian parent company.

Faraj’s wife, who is on government benefits, is listed on organisational charts as NuGenesis’ “business development manager”. She is one of his major creditors, as is “Mozu Bohagen (sic)” who Faraj claimed lent him $3.6 million in the form of a personal guarantee. Another creditor, who was owed $380,000, was a company associated with the Dubai-based Mohsen.

A series of unfortunate events

In early 2023, Faraj told NuCoin investors that they were the victims of the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading firm, Alameda Research. He told this masthead that NuGenesis had been on the verge of a $100 million payday when Alameda Research collapsed.

“The scandal has resulted in significant losses for many investors, but NuGenesis has remained resilient and is preparing to launch NuCoin version 2, which could potentially transform the blockchain industry,” NuGenesis says in an April 2023 press release.

“When the coin was launched, Alameda forged our coin and dumped it at a cheap price,” Faraj told followers on Twitter. He also said he had used NuGenesis’s unique technology to uncover Bankman-Fried’s fraud and bring about his downfall. This masthead has not been able to substantiate Faraj’s claim.

In October 2023, Faraj offered himself as an expert witness for disgruntled investors in a US bankruptcy court dealing with the collapse of Celsius, which was effectively a bank for the crypto industry where people could take out loans using their cryptocurrencies as security.

However, the court found Faraj’s 172-page report was “unreliable and fails to meet the standard for admission” because, instead of relying on data and facts, his report was generated by AI.

The judge held that Faraj’s expert report “contained numerous errors, ranging from duplicated paragraphs to mistakes in its description of the trading window selected for evaluation”. While his report was ruled inadmissible, Faraj was allowed to give oral testimony.

Celsius founder Alexander Mashinsky has pleaded guilty to the multi-billion dollar fraud. He is yet to be sentenced.

US lawyer Damian Williams said: “Alexander Mashinsky orchestrated one of the biggest frauds in the crypto industry. He lured ordinary, retail crypto investors into investing billions of dollars in Celsius with false promises that their investments were low-risk.”

Back in Australia, frustrated investors have continued to demand answers. Faraj confused and dazzled investors with “a whole bunch of higgledy-piggledy big words”, said one investor.

“NuGenesis’ NuCoin uses system validator nodes running on the randomness of a round robin protocol and monitored by AI to underscore system integrity,” says the company’s website.

Petroulias was gloomy about NuGenesis’ future, telling this masthead, “Nobody’s involved. Huss is trying to keep it alive, trying to keep it going. They can’t afford to pay anybody anymore.”

But Faraj’s optimism remains undiminished. “I just secured a $100 million pledge,” he told this masthead. He then sent a heavily redacted document as proof.