Journalists of the international organization Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, together with the Swedish public broadcaster SVT and 30 other media, found a large -scale cryptocurrency fraud scheme, which lasted from 2021 to 2025.
As part of this scheme, two international call center networks were searched by 33 thousand people around the world, cutting more than $ 275 million. The criminals attracted victims through advertising on social networks, promising a high profit from cryptocurrency investments, and then deceived to install remote access software on their devices, allowing fraudsters to control the victims.
One of the key locations of the criminal network was Kyiv, where Radio Liberty journalists found a possible location of one of the offices of the scheme. The office was located in a building owned by the wife of People's Deputy Anton Yatsenko. In the framework of the investigation, several Ukrainian companies used in the criminal scheme were also identified.
One of these companies was Estella Ukraine, which had a nominal owner-a 23-year-old Kyiv, who signed documents for a monthly remuneration, not suspecting that the company was part of an international cryptocurrency fraud scheme.
The investigation also showed that before the full -scale war, fraudsters actively involved Ukrainians in the registration of companies for reward, although in fact, these companies were managed by cybercriminals. The network had representative offices not only in Ukraine but also in Bulgaria and Cyprus, but all these offices acted under the guidance of a centralized team in Israel. The total losses from their actions are estimated at a minimum of $ 240 million, and among the largest casualties were countries such as Canada, Spain, Australia, the United Kingdom and South Africa.
