Ukraine breaks up Kyiv-based crypto drainer ring handling $1M monthly
Criminals drove a Porsche and traveled with armed security guards.
A crypto wallet scam in Kyiv has been shut down. By Unsplash / Cybernews.
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- Ukrainian police shut down a Kyiv-based fake crypto investment network targeting victims in more than 20 countries.
- The sites showed fake profits, then used test transactions to drain victims’ wallets.
- Investigators say the group also collected passports, credentials, photos, emails, and phone numbers.
- Police identified 62 victims and nearly 50 suspects after accessing servers in the Netherlands.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
A Kyiv-based network of fake investment platforms has been draining crypto wallets belonging to people in more than 20 countries for months. The Ukrainian police have now shut down the scheme.
According to Ukraine’s National Police and Security Service, the organizer of the operation and his recruits, working across several offices in Kyiv and the surrounding region, were building fake platforms and keeping them online against blocking attempts.
The group advertised supposedly profitable crypto projects on Telegram, telling users to connect their crypto wallet and send funds to what the crooks said were investment projects.
The schemers then faked the trading manually, showing climbing balances in each customer’s dashboard.
In fact, when customers tried to withdraw funds, the participants in the scheme gained access to their crypto wallets and transferred the assets to controlled accounts, the National Police of Ukraine's press release says.
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They achieved that by telling the victims, curious why they can’t withdraw funds, to approve a small test transaction and then feeding this droplet of money to a drainer built into the fake site. The drainer moved the assets to wallets controlled by the group.
The crooks also collected customers' personal data: passport information, phone numbers, email addresses, passwords, login credentials, and photos.
The Ukrainian investigators, though, managed to gain access to servers in the Netherlands where the schemers stored their database.
Since the latter contained lists of victims, addresses of their crypto wallets, amounts of stolen assets, and general information about the whole operation, the investigators quickly got everything they needed to greenlight the arrests and shut down the operation.
The scheme was pretty massive. According to the police, the suspects drove luxury car models like Porsche or BMW and traveled with armed security.
Ukraine’s Security Service describes the mastermind behind the operation – the turnover of which reached up to $1 million a month at its peak – as a 25-year-old IT specialist from Kyiv.
Officers conducted 34 searches across Kyiv and the region, seizing more than 100 computers, more than 100 phones, 79 SIM cards, a GSM gateway, cash, and 15 cars.
Investigators have identified 62 victims so far, including citizens of Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Israel. Close to 50 suspects were involved in the scheme.
