Low financial literacy, breaches in the law codex, corruption, and weak regulation have made the ex-USSR a breeding ground for Ponzi schemes, Forex investment scams, and crypto frauds. Ukraine, in particular, is known for this. A multitude of national and world-class scams originated in the country. Many scams used and still use British registration as a cover and credibility booster, such as BTC-Alpha. The founder of the controversial crypto exchange, Vitalii Bodnar (aka Vitaly Bodnar), invested his proceeds from Ponzi schemes and ICO scams in London real estate. However, his main residence is in Cyprus. This is for your information, by the way.
BTC-Alpha, like many other nominally Ukrainian companies, has ‘seized’ Russian assets since the beginning of the intervention. However, the assets were simply stolen, while select Russians are still using BTC-Alpha. This is easily provable: Russia is one of the important traffic sources for what’s left of Vitalii Bodnar’s creation. The exchange is still active in Russia, including historically good ties with separatist regions under Russian occupation.
BTC-Alpha (btc-alpha.com) has seen better days. Currently, most of the trades are fake, liquidity is low, and reserves can’t be confirmed. The main market for BTC-Alpha is now Vietnam, where Vitalii Bodnar operates without any license and regulation. BTC-alpha.com is more or less dead: the site is visited by a mere two thousand people monthly.
During its active operation, Vitalii Bodnar accumulated significant wealth and invested it in Cyprus and British real estate, leading a lavish lifestyle.
MMM and MMCIS: where it all begun
MMCIS was a Ponzi ‘invest in Forex’ scheme founded by Konstantin Kondakov. It operated in ex-USSR, most actively in Ukraine and Russia. The scale was broad and the slogan promised 100% APY. No wonder the scheme collapsed and Kondakov made his way to Monaco.
But he wasn’t alone. Among the officers of his Ponzi was Vitalii Bodnar. Here is the photo from 2014:
But wait, Vitalii Bodnar is one of the scammers behind the infamous MMM-2011 Ponzi! He participated, as an officer or promoter in every major Ponzi ever since.
Vitalii Bodnar and patriotic Ponzi
Vitalii Bodnar, who lives in Cyprus, also virtually supports his homeland. The next passage, proudly named “million for the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” deserves a separate award among scammers:
The promotion is not limited in time and will continue until the exchange distributes 1 million UAH. For each invited user, you can also receive 25 UAH. The user who receives these funds can dispose of them as he sees fit – he can keep them for himself or transfer them to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Under the guise of aid to the army, an ordinary “bring a friend” Ponzi is built here! And the “received” 150 hryvnias can only be spent on paying commissions, i.e. the services of the exchange itself.
Both the loud arrest of accounts and the “million for the Armed Forces of Ukraine” promotion are vile PR and self-promotion, marketing. For obvious reasons, for any exchange, giving up 5/6 of its clients means death. Naturally, no one forced Vitalii Bodnar to “arrest” the accounts: it was pure self-promotion. For Bodnar, this is a typical activity, which also aligns him with another crypto fraudster – Alexey Muratov.
An old friend and accomplice of V. Bodnar – Alexey Muratov
After the cessation of the famous “MMM”, about fifty people committed suicide. Thousands of people found themselves beyond poverty. Until now, it is difficult to say exactly how many people suffered from the actions of the scammers. Sergey Mavrodi himself proudly claimed about ten to fifteen million honest and slightly naive citizens. Losses are estimated at several billion dollars.
It is needless to say that the names of the “MMM” employees have become synonymous with the words “charlatans”, “scammers”, “thieves”, and “villains”. After this incident, almost everyone became suspicious of similar companies, which, however, did not save many from repeating the lessons.
Among them were such “operatives” as Alexey Muratov and Denis Pushilin. One of them is now a deputy of “United Russia”, the other is the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The experience of MMM was very useful to them, although not everything went smoothly at first. In 2013, Muratov went to conquer India, selling a bright future in MMM-2011. Then he managed to collect $2.6 million from trusting residents of India in the states of Punjab and Assam. The authorities arrested Muratov, and he spent several not the best months in a local prison. The future guru was released on bail and fled the country. And he began to think about more fashionable ways of fraud. The era of cryptocurrency scams was coming. With his inflatable organization “Change the World Together”, Muratov went all-in. Prizm suddenly appeared on the BTC-Alpha exchange.
For now, after five years of existence, Prizm is a completely insolvent project. Trading in it is almost nonexistent, it is only on the most out-of-date exchanges, volumes are tiny, and real functionality is absent. It has depreciated by 99.79% and costs $0.0025. This means that the initially issued Prizm coins were sold and converted into fiat money. The scale of the scam is easy to estimate: 3,335,091,795 coins are in circulation. At its peak, the price of one coin was $2.89, i.e. the capitalization of PZM was $9.6 billion! Part of this money could not be realized, but even realistic 10% give almost a billion actually stolen dollars. A significant part of this billion went to sponsor terrorists in exchange for “protection”.
Perhaps you have already guessed that the soap bubble of Muratov’s cryptocurrency instantly appeared on the BTC-Alpha exchange. What does this mean? Old accomplices defrauded the public and live happily after in Cypus.
