Bankera founders blew ICO funds on luxury real estate, report

The founders of now-collapsed Lithuanian crypto project Bankera (BNK) used funds from its much-hyped initial coin offering (ICO) to buy up luxury real estate, including a villa on the French Riviera and high-end property in Lithuania, leaving unlucky investors a collective €100 million ($113.7 million) out of pocket.

This is according to a joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Lithuanian outlet 15min.

Bankera’s founders Vytautas Karalevičius, Justas Dobiliauskas, and Mantas Mockevičius raised the funds from more than 100,000 investors during the 2017 ICO, promising to create “a bank for the blockchain era.”

However, according to the OCCRP, instead of building the promised blockchain-powered bank, the founders appear to have funneled millions into an extensive real estate portfolio via a web of companies and a privately owned Pacific island bank.

The ICO proceeds, originally meant to develop cryptocurrency infrastructure and banking services, were reportedly used to back a series of opaque loans, many of which were routed through Pacific Private Bank (PPB) in Vanuatu — a bank the trio quietly acquired near the end of the ICO.

Properties reportedly purchased include a €1.1 million ($1.25 million) villa in Èze, France; multiple properties in Vilnius, Lithuania; and a beachfront resort in Vanuatu.

The transactions were facilitated using accounts in PPB, where leaked bank records show over €45 million ($51 million) was transferred from Lithuania-based Bankera ecosystem companies.

The ICO took place between August 2017 and early 2018, peaking during the global crypto boom. In the years that followed, the BNK token collapsed in value, while weekly payouts to investors — a key feature advertised in the white paper — also dwindled and were eventually halted in 2022.

By 2025, the token’s total market capitalization had plummeted to about $1 million.

Kathryn Westmore, a financial crime expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told reporters, “To extract funds and seemingly use them to finance personal spending raises suspicions that investors have been misled and [the co-founders] have profited personally.”

She also claimed that the rash of ICOs in 2017 and 2018 was “the epitome of the wild west of crypto,” and added that people facing losses from crypto investments often miss out on compensation, due in part to the lack of oversight of the sector.

Despite multiple attempts by reporters to contact Bankera’s founders, no direct response was received by the OCCRP. Lawyers for Bankera UAB, one of several entities in the “Bankera ecosystem,” denied any wrongdoing and claimed that the PPB acquisition was part of a broader strategy to build a blockchain-powered neobank.

They also acknowledged the token’s decline but insisted that the brand remains successful.

The Central Bank of Lithuania has confirmed it referred the case to law enforcement but declined to disclose further details. Meanwhile, the founders continue to appear at cryptocurrency conferences and maintain active roles in Lithuania’s fintech scene.

While Bankera’s website still advertises a “modern bank account alternative,” it has failed to secure a European Union banking license seven years after its launch.

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