Since the start of the full-scale invasion by the aggressor country, the number of frauds in Ukraine has been steadily increasing. In 2022, as reported by Forbes, losses from internet fraud and the use of social engineering methods rose by 96% compared to the previous year and reached 1 billion UAH. According to «Economic Truth», law enforcement officers opened a record number of fraud cases in just the first quarter of this year – over 24,000.
Experts cite the socio-economic situation as the reason for this surge in fraudulent activities, writes Andriy Karpinskyi in his article for the projects CRiME and [high-profile cases]. The worse it is, the more stressed people become, making them susceptible to manipulation. The most horrific war in Europe since the 1940s has made Ukraine a haven for scammers.
After February 2022, a subtype of scammers known as info-gypsies also became more active in the country.
Info-gypsyism, if you’re not in the loop, is a type of fraud where a swindler presents themselves as a successful professional and sells informational products at a high price, which are of virtually no practical value. Simply put, the scammer extorts money from trusting victims, promising to teach them how to earn even more money.
These scams appear somewhat sophisticated and safe for their organizers. Even if a victim gives away their money and receives nothing in return, they may not always realize that they have fallen into a fraudulent scheme. Info-gypsies initially promise a 100% result and then claim that it is solely the students’ fault for their projects’ failures, saying that they’re doing everything wrong, but the knowledge works.
A classic example of a large info-gypsy scheme is the “Global Training System” of the notorious Robert Fletcher, which operated in Ukraine in the mid-2000s and quickly turned into a colossal “financial pyramid.” This swindler’s group defrauded thousands of Ukrainians out of over $200 million, promising to teach them how to become millionaires by investing in highly liquid assets.
«Twins» from the info-gypsy camp
A new wave of info-gypsies is “teaching” how to profit from digital assets, namely cryptocurrencies. The most “promoted” in this field is the young crypto guru Oleksandr Orlovskyi, to whom we dedicated a series of publications and a separate investigation.
Oleksandr Orlovskyi
Oleksandr Orlovskyi, in aggressive hype advertising dominating the network, appears as a successful crypto-investor millionaire who created the Financial Freedom Academy (FFA-academy) to teach ordinary Ukrainians how to succeed in the crypto market even without starting capital. However, our investigations and those of our colleagues led to the disappointing conclusion that Oleksandr Orlovskyi deceives his students. His achievements in crypto investing are more than questionable, with nothing to confirm them besides empty claims in advertising articles. Negative reviews from former “students” of Orlovskyi are carefully cleaned from the internet, while the web is flooded with enthusiastic praises of Orlovskyi, written almost like a template.
Moreover, as we have discovered, payment for “training” at Orlovskyi’s FFA-academy, which reaches tens of thousands of hryvnias per person, is mostly directed to the accounts of third-party individual entrepreneurs, who have signs of being “shell” companies. This suggests that Oleksandr Orlovskyi may be practicing not only info-gypsyism but also financial fraud along with tax evasion.
On the other hand, the presence of “left” FOPs (individual entrepreneurs) might indicate that Oleksandr Orlovskyi is not an independent player, and more influential actors have been behind his scheme from the beginning.
This assumption is confirmed by the appearance of another “star,” which, overshadowing Orlovskyi, shone this year on the crypto-gypsy horizon. This is Kateryna Shukhnina.
Kateryna Shukhnina
Kateryna Shukhnina, also known on social media as Investanuta and Katya Krypto, positions herself as the founder of the “Profit Lady” academy. There, as in Orlovskyi’s FFA-academy, she promises to teach everyone how to make money on the crypto market, even without starting capital. Of course, not for free. Depending on the “intensity,” Kateryna Shukhnina, like Oleksandr Orlovskyi, charges between $500 and $1500 per course of “education.”
The Profit Lady academy de jure does not exist, just like Orlovskyi’s Financial Freedom Academy. However, as in his case, payment for “training” at Shukhnina’s academy is often accepted by third-party FOPs.
Similarities do not end here. Kateryna Shukhnina also focuses on hype advertising publications to promote her “services,” and these are written in a manner similar to Orlovskyi’s cases (you can verify yourself using Google).
Similarly, reviews of Shukhnina’s crypto-mentorship are overly positive and uniform, while all negatives are removed. Information about the girl’s success on the crypto market is limited to her own statements, advertising articles, and performances by characters portraying successful “students” of Katya.
Like Orlovskyi, Kateryna Shukhnina is considered a fraudster in the crypto community.
Kateryna Shukhnina herself denies any fraud from her side, as well as any connection with Oleksandr Orlovskyi. She stated this during a discussion in the Telegram chat of the crypto enthusiast known as Cryptoshaman.
It is quite likely that Investanuta was not deceitful here – she may never have personally met Orlovskyi. However, Kateryna Shukhnina might not even be aware that Oleksandr Orlovskyi is indeed quite connected with her.
This connection can be traced through the internet sites of the “educational” platforms of Orlovskyi and Shukhnina (orlovskyi.com and profit-lady.com respectively). They are suspiciously similar in design, structure, and content.
For instance, if we go to the “Terms of use” section of Shukhnina’s site, we will discover, thanks to the copywriter’s inattention, that this document was borrowed from Orlovskyi’s site.
Thoroughly analyzing Orlovskyi’s and Shukhnina’s sites, including their archive versions, we found yet another intriguing detail. At least until August this year, Shukhnina and Orlovskyi indicated contact emails on the mindmafia.io domain.
In other words, Kateryna Shukhnina and Oleksandr Orlovskyi (or someone on their behalf) communicated with clients via email linked to a domain owned by a shady company registered in Kyiv. The founders of which are connected through one handshake with a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme involving network marketing.
This slender thread leads to very intriguing mutual connections between Katya and Sasha. But we will explore them in the next publication. For now, we will focus on another partnership of Shukhnina, which might not be related to the matter. However, it is quite curious.
Courchevel parties and horror movies
At the end of 2020, Kateryna Shukhnina and a certain Varakuta Alina jointly applied for the registration of “Koinvest” as a trademark. Under this trademark, the girls plan to provide actuarial services, such as financial analysis, banking services, brokerage services in the securities market, brokerage services regarding stocks and bonds, and much more.
If you believe Alina Varakuta’s LinkedIn profile, this lady, despite her young age, supposedly has a decent work experience in finance and digital assets. According to her profile, she currently resides in London and earns a living as a Startup Consultant.
Alina Varakuta
Two years ago, Yahoo!finance reported on Varakuta as a co-founder of Finch Labs from the UAE – “one of the leading European providers of NFT services.” Around the same time, Alina Varakuta registered Finch Labs LLC in Kyiv, indicating its main activity as “data processing, web hosting, and related activities.”
It should be noted that the non-fungible token market (NFT) is linked by experts to large crypto frauds. Also, NFTs have been actively used for money laundering by organized crime worldwide. In particular, between 50% and 80% of all NFT transactions in 2020 had signs of “wash trading.” Alina Varakuta also has certain connections in criminal circles (as noted below).
The publication New York Weekly Staf featured a note about Alina Varakuta last year, describing her as a young girl from Ukraine who fulfilled her long-standing dream of becoming an actress in the United Kingdom. Indeed, over the last year, Alina Varakuta played (mostly minor) roles in half a dozen low-budget films, including the role of lesbian Diana in the horror movie Piglet’s Return.
Piglet’s Return movie poster
Still from Piglet’s Return
However, the Ukrainian public may know little about this actress’s achievements on the British big screen. In Ukraine, Alina Varakuta is known as a glamorous influencer with 120,000 followers on Instagram. She gained scandalous fame in January 2023 following an outrageously luxurious birthday celebration at the Courchevel ski resort.
Just for the Cristal champagne, the birthday girl shelled out at least 20,000 euros, which could not help but provoke outrage among her compatriots from the war-torn country, where people sometimes give up their last to support the front. The scandal was so loud that Varakuta had to publicly justify herself. She claimed that this was her way of “demonstrating the indomitability of the Ukrainian people.”
Despite the scandal, Alina Varakuta did not break the tradition of celebrating birthdays at a luxurious resort this year as well, but to avoid hate, she wisely did not share all the details of the last celebration on social media.
Nevertheless, in the context of this story, they are not crucial. A more interesting detail is that both in 2023 and 2024, the guests at the birthday celebration of the “British actress” included the winner of the “Miss Ukraine Universe 2018” Karina Zhosan and her husband Serhiy Osherovskyi, who are in Europe as refugees. As far as can be judged, Alina Varakuta is quite close with this couple.
Serhiy Osherovskyi and Karina Zhosan congratulate Varakuta on the anniversary
Serhiy Osherovskyi, who is attributed with the status of a criminal “authoritative figure,” according to open sources, is part of the entourage of the “thief in law” Khussein Blynd (Khussein Akhmedov) and the “Potapiv” organized crime group, which serves the interests of MP from OPFL Vadym Stolar.
Osherovskyi, also known as Serhiy Israeli (for his Ukrainian-Israeli citizenship), is somewhat related to the world of cryptocurrencies. Specifically, Serhiy Osherovskyi is involved as an extortionist in a case of extorting 15 Bitcoins from citizen Nevedomskyi.
To be continued…