A large amount of cryptocurrency has reportedly been withdrawn from a wallet previously controlled by the Finiko Ponzi scheme in Russia. Unknown operators in the wallet transferred coins worth $ 48 million this month. The digital currency was split into smaller amounts and deposited at different addresses.
750 BTC Removed From Crypto Pyramid Finiko Wallet
A total of 750 BTC, worth around $48 million at the time of writing, has been withdrawn from one of the wallets used by crypto Ponzi scheme Finiko, Forklog reported. Youtube blogger Andrey Alistarov broke news of the transfer, revealing that it had been made in three separate transactions of 250 BTC each since early November.
The money was initially moved to a single address and subsequently sent to another wallet at the cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, quoted data from blockchain analysis platform Crystal Blockchain shows. The crypto funds were then split into smaller amounts and transferred to other addresses, the details of the publication.
Alistarov alleged that these transactions had been ordered by three of Finiko’s high-ranking members who are still at large. Zygmunt Zygmuntovich, Marat Sabirov and Edward Sabirov, close associates of pyramid founder Kirill Doronin, managed to leave the Russian Federation as the crypto investment program collapsed this summer, avoiding detention. In September, a high court in Tatarstan confirmed their international arrest warrants.
The Russian vlogger said the co-founders of Finiko voluntarily transferred the money in multiple transactions. “Why they haven’t been locked up until now is unclear, because they have long been marked as a scam. One thing is clear: money is being collected right now, ”added Andrey Alistarov.
Authorities in Russia are currently working to establish all the facts in the case with Finiko, a phantom entity that lured hundreds of thousands of investors by advertising itself as an “automatic profit generation system” and promising extraordinarily high returns. Due to the scale of the fraud, the Federal Ministry of the Interior has resumed the investigation.
In early October, Kirill Doronin, an Instagram influencer associated with other Ponzi schemes in the past, two of Finiko’s vice presidents, Ilgiz Shakirov and Dina Gabdullina, as well as Lilia Nurieva, who rose to the rank of a so-called “10th Star,” were transferred to the capital Moscow.
Finiko is arguably Russia’s largest financial pyramid system since the infamous MMM in the 1990s. While the officially registered losses to the scam have reached 1 billion rubles (close to $14 million), independent estimates suggest the total is more likely to exceed $4 billion.
According to a report by blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis, the Ponzi scheme received more than $ 1.5 billion worth of bitcoins in 800,000 separate investor deposits between December 2019 and August 2021. Among its victims are citizens of Russia, Ukraine and other former-Soviet countries, several EU member states, and the U.S.
