The situation is aggravated by the fact that the vast majority of law enforcement officers investigating crimes in the cryptosphere do not have sufficient qualifications, and often have no idea at all about what they are investigating.
And the victims understand this too, so they prefer to turn not to the official authorities, but to private companies that promise to find the scammers and return the stolen money for a percentage. In principle, this is normal - if it is impossible to punish the scammers, then it is better to lose part than everything. But the smartest "investigators" went further. Who first came up with the brilliant idea is unknown, but the following scheme was recently recorded in Russia. A certain company that positions itself as "blockchain investigators" applied and implemented a rather sophisticated, albeit old as the world, method of taking away cryptocurrency. The essence comes down to the following.
Usually, when searching for a criminal who stole someone else’s crypto, you need to find a place where he will cash it out. As a rule, this is done in a crypto exchanger, where money is withdrawn into cash through a cryptocurrency exchange. Finding this place is not easy, but still possible. One of the most famous companies for such a search is Plain Chain. However, nuances arose in its work that interested a number of publications specializing in crime. As follows from the materials posted in a number of media outlets, Plain Chain simply skipped the stage of searching for fraudsters, and began to contact crypto exchanges and exchangers immediately with decisions of the investigator or the court on the seizure of digital assets as part of an investigation or as part of an initiated criminal case, or even a court decision. An example of such a decision is in the photo.
Another story happened with the Garantex crypto exchange, which also received the Resolution of the Basmanny District Court of Moscow No. 3/1-2/2023 dated 01/18/2023 on the seizure of the cryptocurrency deposit account of one of the clients. Which the exchange obediently complied with, but it later turned out that the resolution with such a number was issued for a completely different case, which had nothing to do with either fraud or cryptocurrency. The judge, whose signature was on the resolution presented by Plain Chain to the exchange, was stunned and stated that she had not issued or signed anything like that. Moreover, she issued a certificate about it. This story is described in detail here.
But, as you may have guessed, the gist is simple – all these decrees are forged, and the goal is to block cryptocurrency accounts and withdraw money from them (again, using forged decrees) or, if this fails, to get a “kickback” from the account owner for unblocking and “solving the issue”. In the first case, it was about 1032 bitcoins, in the second – about 400,000 dollars. It is clear that the game was worth the candle.
But our story is not about the details of the frauds (there are more than two of them, by the way), but about the people who came up with them. The scheme is not new - there is an episode in the TV series "Investigation Led by Experts" in which they come to some shop worker with a fake search warrant and "confiscate" his belongings. Plain Chain simply modernized the idea. Oddly enough, Plain Chain is not a fake company. It is registered according to all the rules, and its director and founder is listed as a certain Grebenik Nikolai Tarasovich.
Even a cursory glance at the registers raises questions - the office, positioning itself as "cool professionals" in the field of cryptocurrency fraud and turning over millions, has one employee, zero revenue and negative assets. In addition, it is registered at an address that is a "place of mass registration". But that’s not all - until 01.08.2023, the director and co-founder of Plain Chain LLC was a certain Aginova Bayrta Arkadyevna, who left the co-owners at the time of resignation of the director’s powers. Judging by the fact that Bayrta Aginova is listed as a founder in two such "shells", she, like the current "owner" of the Plain Chain office Grebenik, are ordinary front men, pounds.
In fact, there are people from the depths of the law enforcement system behind OOO Plain Chain. This is Ays Nikolaevich Dorzhinov, a former analyst at the Internet Security Center of the FSB of the Russian Federation, who lives in Dubai, UAE. When he left work, he took with him databases that greatly help him in his current activities. Judging by his place of residence, they help him greatly
Based on Dorzhinov’s nationality, it can be assumed with a fair degree of probability that Bayrta Aginova is his creature, and that she was removed from the founders of Plain Chain LLC not by chance.
The second person is Kutin (Kutin) Andrey Olegovich, who before going into business worked as an operative officer of the Main Directorate for Drug Control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, and also lives in Dubai.
At the same time, he is the founder of Match Systems LLP, registered in Kazakhstan:
The company is clearly legal, at least partially. Several dozen people work at Match Systems LLC, and it can in no way be called a “dummy”:
In addition, Kutyin leads an active business life and regularly appears at events related to cryptocurrency.
The third person in Plain Chain is said to be lawyer Georgy Andreevich Rakhaev. Judging by his specialization (cryptocurrency and drugs), it was he who brought the former FSB officer and the policeman together.
As we can see, two of the three key figures in the “investigation of cryptocurrency fraud” permanently live abroad, all three are lawyers, two come from the depths of the law enforcement system. That is, they understand perfectly well how it works. Therefore, forging a court decision or an investigator’s order is not a problem for them. But simple forgery is not enough. Because it is not always possible to foist this obviously fake paper on the one they are going to “cheat”. They have to involve former colleagues. Who falsify the necessary documents and criminal cases. Little is known about these werewolves in uniform, but one of the (already former) police officers burned out on this cooperation. We are talking about investigator Antonina Shakina from Moscow, who is involved in a criminal case as an accused of falsifying a court decision to freeze an account on the Garantex crypto exchange.
It is unknown who attracted her – Kutyin, Rakhaev or Dorzhinov, but the money, according to her “resolution”, went to the accounts of TOO “Match Systems”, although the exchange blocked the account, several million were withdrawn from it. By the way, Shakina worked in the Basmanny district of the capital. The amount of the scam was 25 million rubles, which, according to her resolution, they tried to withdraw from the same Garantex exchange
As you can see, the scheme was the same - fake orders to freeze accounts and the same fake demands to transfer money from these accounts to fictitious accounts allegedly belonging to the "victim". While Shakina is sitting in jail, how it will all end is unknown. Whether she will give up her accomplices is also unclear. But if she does, it is unknown whether Dozhinov and Kutyin, who are prudently hiding away from their homeland, will be handed over to Russian law enforcement.
While they are sitting in Dubai, Roskomnadzor received a demand on behalf of the CEO of Plain Chain LLC, Nikolai Tarasovich Grebenik, to remove from access "materials that discredit Plain Chain LLC." We are talking specifically about materials that talk about schemes for taking away excess cryptocurrency from citizens. How Grebenik’s statement about "well-deserved authority and a positive reputation earned over the years by open, honest and professional work of the company’s employees" correlates with the fact that Plain Chain LLC was registered only in September 2021, has one employee and has no financial results other than negative ones - let it remain on the conscience of Mr. Grebenik. But it serves as further confirmation of the simple fact that the Plain Chain office requires close attention from law enforcement agencies.
