Kompromat.ru continues to publish an investigation into the activities of the Match systems, also known as Plain chain, companies created by retired employees of the FSB of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

They specialize in stealing huge amounts of cryptocurrency from clients of the largest exchanges using fake decisions of Russian courts and corrupt law enforcement officers. Using a fake decision of the Moscow City Court, scammers from Match systems (Plain chain) blocked $400,000 on a businessman’s account at the Garantex exchange and tried to steal this money.  This was reported by  KOMPROMAT RU

Then the representatives of the victim received an official document that the court decision was a forgery. But they did not have time to return the funds. We continue the story of the representative of the victim:

"At the beginning of February 2023, the seized funds were still on the account. In the middle, they disappeared. That is, for some reason, the exchange wrote off the balances, this happened around the same days when we received confirmation from the court about the counterfeit. At the same time, we notified the representatives of the exchange’s Security Council and asked for a meeting. The meeting took place at the end of February.

At a meeting with representatives of the Garantex exchange Security Service, we talked to the person responsible for processing requests from law enforcement agencies. And then we got really p…. It turned out that the exchange complies with everything, there is no procedure for checking the resolutions. Not bad for an exchange with billion-dollar turnover, right?

Here I want to digress. In the recent past, I myself was an employee of the Security Service of the bank and one of my duties was precisely to check all sorts of incoming requests and decisions of law enforcement agencies and the court. I checked them for authenticity in various ways. In this case, it is enough to check the decisions through the websites of the Moscow courts, which the Security Service of the entire exchange did not know about.

And this is not the most important point, that the exchange does not check the authenticity of the papers, referring only to the fact that e-mails are sent to them from the domain name @mvd.ru, and the originals of the papers are brought by employees upon presentation of an official ID. Here we will not go into such details that in the court ruling on a good display you can see Photoshop, these are, let’s say, specific skills. But what any competent lawyer can understand is that the investigator’s ruling "on lifting the arrest and transferring funds from Petya to Vasya" is clearly illegal and cannot be executed, because deprivation of property rights is possible only by a court decision or in certain cases stipulated by law. Nevertheless, it was executed, and our client lost about 25 million rubles at the exchange rate at that time. And after that, a meeting took place at the exchange’s Security Council.

At the meeting, the Garantex Security Service employees were shown the original certificate from the court stating that the court ruling was fake. They also explained that, according to them, the deposit was written off by the ruling of investigator Shakina and transferred to the account of the alleged victim, who, let me remind you, is represented by Match Systems. However, the exchange allegedly did not allow these funds to be withdrawn at the last moment and is holding them. We had a natural question - if the ruling is fake and you know it, could you return this money to its rightful owner?

And here the refined cringe began. No clear answer was given, since the employee we spoke with had to consult with the head of the exchange’s security service. A week later, the security service employees made it clear that no refund should be expected, and then they stopped communicating altogether. This, by the way, is a characteristic feature of this exchange - all communication on work issues from the outside, in particular lawyers, is practically impossible without personal acquaintances and good relations.

The exchange then chose an excellent position, which it still holds today:

Yes, we understand that we have executed an illegal order and taken your money from you;

No, we will not refund the client’s money until you bring us a court or investigator’s order that specifically states that we should return your deposit to you.

Garantex, Match Systems and document forgery. A series of bedtime stories. Part 5.

What we got:

The exchange wrote off the client’s funds based on fictitious court and investigator orders that directly contradicted the law, without conducting a proper check;

The exchange acknowledged the fact that the decisions were falsified;

The exchange flatly refused to return the deposit to the user until it was ordered to do so by a real court decision.

The position of the exchange is striking in its inconsistency. First, they execute an illegal decision, but to restore the rights of their client they demand a legal one. It’s like bailiffs evicting you from your apartment based on a drawn-up writ of execution, and when you bring them a certificate from the court that such a writ of execution never existed, they say: "We agree. But we will not let you back home. Bring a court decision that will oblige us to let you back in." Only if in the case of bailiffs it is possible to appeal their illegal actions in the same court, then in the case of Garantex it is impossible to do this: Garantex does not have a legal entity in Russia, their Estonian legal entity was liquidated long ago, all their activities are not regulated by anyone or anything.

Just think, your deposit on Garantex can be written off tomorrow at any moment using fictitious pieces of paper. And even if you prove three times that they are fictitious, you will never see your money again. Can you imagine? This is reality. The big question is whether it is worth keeping large deposits there. But of course, you decide for yourself. We are simply telling stories that cannot be kept silent about.

Oh yeah, and about the investigation by the Investigative Committee. During the work, more than 5 similar episodes were identified. In another one, our lawyers also represent the interests of the victim - there a person lost 900,000 rubles on the same papers, and the exchange also does not want to hear about it, they are even afraid to meet with lawyers. Moreover, in the case of these 900,000 rubles, the money left the exchange altogether, although the investigation was also initiated only as an attempt at theft. And in the main episode, which we are broadcasting about, the investigator directly refuses to withdraw from the exchange and arrest, already within the framework of the current criminal case, the subject of the crime - our cryptocurrency stolen by fraudsters. Although this is his direct responsibility. But relations with him are purely procedural issues and will be resolved by us in accordance with the procedure established by law. Such are the realities of our criminal cases. We continue to fight.

And yes, we do not publish names, surnames, exact dates, amounts, etc. here, since an investigation is underway. However, everything stated above is documented.

The story was published with one message: be careful when working with Match Systems and when working with the Garantex cryptocurrency exchange. From the example of the story, we see that there are a huge number of questions about both, and when working with them, there is a huge risk of losing large deposits under the sauce of murky checks, investigations, arrests, and so on. Draw your own conclusions."