UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 19-2129

RECEIVER FOR REX VENTURE GROUP, LLC,

Defendant - Appellant,

v.

BANCA COMERCIALA VICTORIABANK SA,

Appellee,

and

SECURITIES & EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Plaintiff,

v.

REX VENTURE GROUP, LLC, d/b/a Zeekrewards.com; PAUL R. BURKS; TRUDY 

GILMOND; KELLIE KING; BBVA COMPASS

Defendants,

and

NXSYSTEMS, INC.,

Respondent,

and

DAWN WRIGHT-OLIVARES; DANIEL OLIVARES; ALEXANDRE DE BRANTES

Intervenors.
2

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at 

Charlotte. Graham C. Mullen, Senior District Judge. (3:12-cv-00519-GCM)

Argued: October 16, 2020 Decided: January 29, 2021

Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, and KEENAN and FLOYD, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. 

ARGUED: Mark W. Kinghorn, MCGUIREWOODS, LLP, Charlotte, North Carolina, for 

Appellant. Kiran H. Mehta, TROUTMAN SANDERS LLP, Charlotte, North Carolina, for 

Appellee. ON BRIEF: Joshua D. Davey, Matthew E. Orso, Jacob R. Franchek, 

MCGUIREWOODS, LLP, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant. Lindsey B. Mann, 

Kathleen Campbell, TROUTMAN SANDERS LLP, Atlanta, Georgia, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

This contempt proceeding comes to us on appeal for the second time. Matthew E. 

Orso, the appointed receiver (the “Receiver”) for Rex Venture Group, LLC (RVG) d/b/a 

ZeekRewards.com, appeals the district court’s determination that it lacked personal 

jurisdiction over Banca Comerciala Victoriabank SA (Victoriabank). Victoriabank is a 

commercial bank with its headquarters and principal place of business in the Republic of 

Moldova. For the following reasons, we affirm.

I.

A.

This case arises out of the Receiver’s efforts to return funds to the victims of 

ZeekRewards, a combined Ponzi and pyramid scheme. RVG operated ZeekRewards, 

ultimately obtaining over $800 million from more than 800,000 individuals. ZeekRewards 

accomplished this scheme by advertising for a “penny auction” website wherein victims 

transferred money through various digital wallet companies.

Relevant here, Payza was one such digital wallet company. To service the digital 

money transfers, Payza used a long chain of payment-processing entities (each named 

variations of “PaymentWorld”) and their sponsoring banks. Within this chain, 

Victoriabank acted as Payza’s acquiring bank. As the acquiring bank and a member of a 

credit-card association, Victoriabank enabled Payza to accept credit-card payments. Thus 

a payment to ZeekRewards involved the following: victims submitted their payment 

information to Payza; California-based PaymentWorld, LLC (PW-USA) transmitted the 
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payment information to Victoriabank; Victoriabank acquired the funds from the credit-card 

company and deposited them into an account owned by Moldova-based ICS Payment 

World SRL (PW-Moldova); Hong Kong–based PaymentWorld Limited (PW-HK) 

transferred those funds from the PW-Moldova account at Victoriabank to Tusar Bank;

Tusar Bank ensured that the correct amount of money was exchanged between 

Victoriabank and the issuing bank (i.e., the bank that issued the credit card to the 

consumer); PW-HK transferred the funds from Tusar Bank to Payza; and then Payza 

transferred those funds to RVG. The PW-Moldova account at Victoriabank retained a 

percentage of each Payza transaction in reserve to cover chargebacks, reversals, or other 

potential risks.

On August 17, 2012, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 

instituted a civil enforcement action against RVG and its principal, Paul Burks, in the 

Western District of North Carolina. That same day, the district court appointed a Receiver 

to assist with returning funds to the scheme’s victims and issued an order freezing RVG’s 

assets (the “2012 Freeze Order”). The 2012 Freeze Order obligated all persons and 

financial institutions in possession of RVG assets to freeze the funds or otherwise make 

them available to the Receiver. At that time, the PW-Moldova account at Victoriabank 

allegedly held $13,174,015.48 in receivership assets.

Roman Balanko, the owner and CEO of PW-USA, called and emailed Victoriabank 

to inform it of the 2012 Freeze Order shortly after it was entered. The Receiver also sent 

a written letter—dated September 11, 2012, and received September 17, 2012—to 

Victoriabank at its headquarters in Moldova. The letter included a copy of the 2012 Freeze 
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Order, informed Victoriabank that the PW-Moldova account contained receivership assets 

subject to the 2012 Freeze Order, and requested assistance in seizing those assets. Both 

the letter and the 2012 Freeze Order were written in English, not Moldova’s official 

language of Romanian. The Receiver never properly served Victoriabank with the 2012 

Freeze Order pursuant to either Moldovan law or the Convention on Service Abroad of 

Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matters, Nov. 15, 1965, 20 

U.S.T. 361, T.I.A.S. No. 6638, commonly known as the Hague Service Convention.

Victoriabank informed the Receiver that it would not comply with the 2012 Freeze 

Order because doing so would violate Moldovan law. Moldovan law distinguishes 

between foreign “precautionary measures” and final, binding foreign judgments. J.A. 

1057. Foreign precautionary measures must be domesticated in Moldova—i.e., given 

effect through Moldovan courts—before they are enforceable within the country. Certain 

final foreign judgments need not be domesticated to be enforceable. The Receiver never 

domesticated the 2012 Freeze Order.

On September 25, 2012, PW-Moldova transferred $15.5 million from its account at 

Victoriabank to a PW-HK account at Tusar Bank in Russia. Victoriabank facilitated this 

transfer by routing the funds through its correspondent account at Bank of New York 

Mellon (BNYM), located in New York City. “A correspondent bank account is a domestic 

bank account held by a foreign bank, similar to a personal checking account used for 

deposits, payments and transfers of funds.” SEC v. Receiver for Rex Ventures Grp., LLC, 

730 F. App’x 133, 135 (4th Cir. 2018) (per curiam) (quoting Licci v. Lebanese Canadian 

Bank, 732 F.3d 161, 165 n.3 (2d Cir. 2013)); see also 31 U.S.C. § 5318A(e)(1)(B) (“The 
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term ‘correspondent account’ means an account established to receive deposits from [and]

make payments on behalf of a foreign financial institution, or handle other financial 

transactions related to such institution.”). Three days after this transfer to Tusar Bank, PWHK routed the funds to an account for PaymentWorld Limited Russian Federation at 

Master Bank in Russia. Master Bank closed soon thereafter, and those funds appear to be

beyond recovery. The Receiver made several attempts to obtain the funds voluntarily from 

Victoriabank and PW-Moldova, to no avail.

B.

Based on Victoriabank’s facilitation of the transfer, the Receiver moved to hold 

Victoriabank in contempt of the 2012 Freeze Order. On February 12, 2016, pending 

resolution of the merits of the contempt motion, the district court issued a second freeze 

order (the “2016 Freeze Order”) on $13,174,015 of unrelated assets in Victoriabank’s 

BNYM correspondent account as a substitute for the assets transferred from PWMoldova’s Victoriabank account.

Victoriabank moved to dismiss the Receiver’s contempt motion and dissolve the 

2016 Freeze Order for lack of personal jurisdiction. The Receiver asserted that the district 

court had personal jurisdiction over Victoriabank based on two independent theories: 

(1) Victoriabank’s violation of the 2012 Freeze Order (the “freeze-order theory”) and 

(2) Victoriabank’s use of its BNYM correspondent account in New York to transfer 

receivership assets (the “correspondent-account theory”). The district court denied full 
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jurisdictional discovery but allowed the Receiver to depose Balanko and issue third-party 

subpoenas to BNYM to obtain certain documents.

Following a hearing, the district court granted Victoriabank’s motion to dismiss. 

The district court explained that because the Receiver had conducted some (albeit not full) 

jurisdictional discovery, the Receiver had to prove personal jurisdiction by a 

preponderance of the evidence. The district court concluded that the Receiver failed to 

establish personal jurisdiction under either of the Receiver’s theories. First, Victoriabank 

had not violated the 2012 Freeze Order because the Receiver never domesticated that order 

in Moldova. Second, Victoriabank’s use of its BNYM correspondent bank account in New 

York was not sufficient contact with North Carolina to give rise to personal jurisdiction.

The Receiver appealed. We reversed and remanded, holding that the district court 

had applied an incorrect standard of proof given the limited jurisdictional discovery it 

allowed. We ordered the district court to either (1) “review the parties’ initial filings and 

apply the lower [prima facie] standard of proof” or (2) “permit additional discovery to 

create a fuller evidentiary record before requiring the Receiver to prove jurisdiction by a 

preponderance of the evidence.” Receiver for Rex Ventures Grp., 730 F. App’x at 137. 

We further ordered that “[s]hould the court employ the lower standard, it ‘must construe 

all relevant pleading allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, assume 

credibility, and draw the most favorable inferences for the existence of jurisdiction.’” Id.

(quoting Combs v. Bakker, 886 F.2d 673, 676 (4th Cir. 1989)).

On remand, the district court granted Victoriabank’s renewed motion to dismiss. 

The district court determined that it had no power under the Federal Rules of Civil 
8

Procedure to order jurisdictional discovery as to Victoriabank, because Victoriabank was 

a nonparty over which there was no preliminary finding of jurisdiction. The district court 

also noted that even if it did have the authority to order additional jurisdictional discovery 

as to Victoriabank, it could not hold Victoriabank in contempt for noncompliance with a 

U.S. court order that had never been domesticated in Moldova. As such, the district court 

chose to review the initial filings rather than allow additional discovery. The district court

ultimately concluded that the Receiver could not demonstrate personal jurisdiction even

under the lower prima facie standard of proof and granted the motion to dismiss. The 

district court allowed the 2016 Freeze Order to remain in effect pending appeal.

The Receiver timely appealed. On appeal, the Receiver argues that the district court 

erred both in finding that he did not make a prima facie showing of personal jurisdiction 

and in denying additional discovery as to Victoriabank. We requested supplemental 

briefing on whether the district court has personal jurisdiction over Victoriabank under 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(2). Specifically, we asked (1) whether Victoriabank 

is subject to personal jurisdiction in any state and (2) whether Victoriabank’s contacts with 

the United States as a whole are sufficient to establish jurisdiction consistent with the Due 

Process Clause.

II.

We review the district court’s determination that it lacks personal jurisdiction over 

Victoriabank de novo. See Carefirst of Md., Inc. v. Carefirst Pregnancy Ctrs., Inc., 334 

F.3d 390, 396 (4th Cir. 2003). The Receiver’s appeal presents two questions: (1) whether 
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the Receiver made a prima facie showing of personal jurisdiction over Victoriabank based 

on the parties’ initial filings and (2) whether the district court erred in denying additional 

jurisdictional discovery. We consider each in turn.

A.

We first determine whether the Receiver has made a prima facie showing of 

personal jurisdiction over Victoriabank based on the parties’ initial filings. “A federal 

district court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation only if: (1) such 

jurisdiction is authorized by the long-arm statute of the state in which the district court sits; 

and (2) application of the relevant long-arm statute is consistent with the Due Process 

Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Universal Leather, LLC v. Koro AR, S.A., 773 F.3d 

553, 558 (4th Cir. 2014) (citing ESAB Grp., Inc. v. Zurich Ins. PLC, 685 F.3d 376, 391 (4th 

Cir. 2012)).

“Under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, there are two paths 

permitting a court to assert personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant.” Id. at 559. 

The first path, specific jurisdiction, “may be established if the defendant’s qualifying 

contacts with the forum state also constitute the basis for the suit.” Id. (citing Tire Eng’g 

v. Shandong Linglong Rubber Co., 682 F.3d 292, 301 (4th Cir. 2012)). The second path, 

general jurisdiction, “requires a ‘more demanding showing of continuous and systematic 

activities in the forum state.’” Id. (quoting Tire Eng’g, 682 F.3d at 301). Here, the 

Receiver presents two theories of specific jurisdiction: the correspondent-account theory 

and the freeze-order theory. We also consider whether specific jurisdiction exists pursuant 
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to Rule 4(k)(2).

1.

The Receiver argues that the district court has personal jurisdictional over 

Victoriabank because Victoriabank used its BNYM correspondent account in New York 

to place the proceeds of the scheme out of the Receiver’s reach. The Receiver cites cases 

applying New York’s long-arm statute, which allows a court to “exercise personal 

jurisdiction over any non-domiciliary . . . who in person or through an agent . . . transacts 

any business within the state or contracts anywhere to supply goods or services in the state.” 

N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 302(a)(1) (McKinney 2008).

Even assuming that Victoriabank is subject to jurisdiction under New York’s longarm statute, the Receiver makes no effort to establish how that jurisdiction extends to North 

Carolina. This failure is fatal to the Receiver’s argument. The Western District of North 

Carolina cannot exercise jurisdiction pursuant to New York’s long-arm statute. See 

Universal Leather, 773 F.3d at 558 (noting that personal jurisdiction must be statutorily 

“authorized by the long-arm statute of the state in which the district court sits”). Based on 

the parties’ initial filings, the Receiver has failed to show how Victoriabank’s use of its 

BNYM correspondent account gives rise to jurisdiction in North Carolina.1

1 In theory, Victoriabank’s use of its correspondent account to transfer receivership 

assets gave rise to an alternative basis for jurisdiction pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 4(k)(1). Under Rule 4(k)(1), the service of a summons may establish personal 

jurisdiction “when authorized by a statute of the United States.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1)(C). 

Several courts of appeals have held that the statutory authorization can be found in 28 
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2.

The Receiver alternatively argues that the district court has personal jurisdiction 

over Victoriabank based on its alleged knowing violation of the 2012 Freeze Order. The 

Receiver relies on a line of cases, beginning with Waffenschmidt v. MacKay, holding that 

district courts have inherent, nationwide authority to institute civil contempt proceedings 

against nonparties who knowingly aid and abet violations of injunctions. See 763 F.2d 

711, 714, 718 (5th Cir. 1985); see also ClearOne Commc’ns, Inc. v. Bowers, 651 F.3d 

1200, 1214–15 (10th Cir. 2011) (allowing district court to exercise specific jurisdiction 

over domestic nonparties for contempt proceedings); SEC v. Homa, 514 F.3d 661, 673–75 

(7th Cir. 2008) (allowing district court to exercise specific jurisdiction over American 

nonparties who resided abroad for contempt proceedings).

The district court declined to extend the reasoning of Waffenschmidt to the instant 

facts, citing Reebok International Ltd. v. McLaughlin, 49 F.3d 1387 (9th Cir. 1995). In 

Reebok, the Ninth Circuit held that a district court lacked jurisdiction over a foreign 

nonparty bank’s violation of a U.S. freeze order in Luxembourg when the freeze order had 

never been domesticated in Luxembourg and Luxembourg law separately required the bank 

U.S.C. §§ 754 and 1692, which together allow a district court to exercise jurisdiction over 

a nonresident holder of receivership assets regardless of whether the holder had any 

contacts with the forum state. See, e.g., Klein v. Cornelius, 786 F.3d 1310, 1318 (10th Cir. 

2015); SEC v. Ross, 504 F.3d 1130, 1145 (9th Cir. 2007); SEC v. Bilzerian, 378 F.3d 1100, 

1103 (D.C. Cir. 2004); Am. Freedom Train Found. v. Spurney, 747 F.2d 1069, 1073 (1st 

Cir. 1984). The Receiver, however, does not meet the requirements of Rule 4(k)(1) or 

§§ 754 and 1692. At the outset, the Receiver admits that he “has not served a summons on 

Victoriabank, nor has Victoriabank waived service,” as required under Rule 4(k)(1). 

Receiver’s Supp. Br. at 1. Nor does the Receiver contest that he failed to meet the filing 

requirements of §§ 754 and 1692.
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to act contrary to that order. See id. at 1392–94 (“[W]hen a national of a foreign country 

follows the law of that country in that country it can[not] be dragged halfway around the 

world to answer contempt charges arising out of a foreign court’s ineffective order.”). 

Similarly, the district court concluded that Moldovan law required the Receiver to 

domesticate the 2012 Freeze Order in Moldova before it was enforceable within that 

country. Because the Receiver never did so, the district court determined that it was never 

enforceable against Victoriabank.2

Intervening case law has simplified this inquiry. Recently, in Hawkins v. i-TV 

Digitalis Tavkozlesi zrt., we held that Waffenschmidt does not necessarily extend to foreign 

nonparties. See 935 F.3d 211, 229 (4th Cir. 2019); cf. Gucci Am., Inc. v. Weixing Li, 768 

F.3d 122, 137 (2d Cir. 2014) (noting that no court of appeals has extended the

Waffenschmidt theory to foreign nonparties). Rather, “[a]lleged foreign nonparty 

contemnors must . . . have minimum contacts with the forum” before a district court can

exercise personal jurisdiction over them. Hawkins, 935 F.3d at 229.3

2 The Ninth Circuit’s conclusion in Reebok relied in part on Luxembourg banking 

law that required the bank to act contrary to the U.S. freeze order. See 49 F.3d at 1392–

94. Notably, experts in the instant case provided competing testimony on Victoriabank’s 

separate obligations under Moldovan banking and money laundering law. The district 

court, however, found no jurisdiction existed over Victoriabank based solely on the 

domestication issue. Regardless, we need not wade into that morass.

3 We acknowledged in Hawkins that “[i]f the [Waffenschmidt] theory is correct and 

courts may exercise jurisdiction over nonparty aiders-and-abettors nationwide, then we 

should arguably adopt a ‘national contacts’ analysis, looking to foreign 

nonparties’ contacts with the entire United States, not just the forum state.” 935 at 229–30

(citing ESAB Grp., Inc. v. Centricut, Inc., 126 F.3d 617, 626–27 (4th Cir. 1997)). But as 

in Hawkins, we need not decide this issue today.
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Yet any minimum contacts analysis of Victoriabank is dead in the water. “When an 

aider-and-abettor was not a party to the underlying proceedings that led to the injunction, 

it must nonetheless be made a party to the contempt proceedings.” Id. (citing Zenith Radio 

Corp. v. Hazeltine Rsch., Inc., 395 U.S. 100, 112 (1969)); Lake Shore Asset Mgmt. Ltd. v. 

CFTC, 511 F.3d 762, 767 (7th Cir. 2007)). “And that necessarily requires valid service of 

process comporting with the Constitution.” Id. The Receiver concedes that he never 

properly served Victoriabank in the instant contempt proceeding. Accordingly, the 

Receiver’s freeze-order theory of jurisdiction fails.

3.

We requested supplemental briefing on whether jurisdiction exists pursuant to 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(2). Rule 4(k)(2) provides a mechanism for exercising 

jurisdiction over a foreign defendant that lacks sufficient contacts with any individual state 

but has sufficient contacts with the United States as a whole to satisfy due process. See 

Grayson v. Anderson, 816 F.3d 262, 271 (4th Cir. 2016). Jurisdiction under Rule 4(k)(2) 

has three prerequisites: (1) the defendant must be served or file a waiver of service, (2) the 

defendant must not be subject to jurisdiction in any state, and (3) exercising jurisdiction 

must be consistent with due process. Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(2).

The Receiver concedes that “Rule 4(k)(2) . . . does not apply” because “[t]he 

Receiver has not served a summons on Victoriabank, nor has Victoriabank waived 

service.” Supp. Br. of Appellant at 1. We agree. Accordingly, jurisdiction does not exist 

under Rule 4(k)(2).
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B.

We next consider whether the district court erred in choosing to review the initial 

filings under a prima facie standard instead of permitting additional jurisdictional 

discovery. We tasked the district court with choosing between the two options, and the

district court exercised its discretion in so choosing. See Carefirst of Md., Inc., 334 F.3d 

at 402–03 (noting that “district courts ‘have broad discretion in [their] resolution of 

discovery problems that arise in cases pending before [them]’” (alterations in original) 

(quoting Mylan Labs., Inc. v. Akzo, N.V., 2 F.3d 56, 59–60 (4th Cir. 1993))). We agree 

with the district court that further jurisdictional discovery would be fruitless given its 

inability to hold Victoriabank in contempt. A nonparty aider-and-abettor must be made 

party to the suit through proper service of process in order to be held in contempt for 

violating an injunction. See Hawkins, 935 F.3d at 229. As discussed, the Receiver never 

properly served Victoriabank. Accordingly, the district court was within its discretion to 

deny additional jurisdictional discovery.

III.

We appreciate that today’s ruling hamstrings the Receiver’s efforts to recompensate 

the ZeekRewards victims. But we cannot flout due process in the name of recompense. 

For the foregoing reasons, the district court’s judgment is

AFFIRMED.