A three-year prison term has been handed down to Lilian Nurieva for her roles in an organized crime ring, and her deceitful dealings with private investors at the Russian Crypto Fund Executive Gets investment company Finiko. According to the Federal Foundation for the Protection of Investors and Shareholders Rights, the $55 million pyramid fraud is the second-biggest financial scam in Russia’s post-Soviet history.
Crypto Investment Fund Turns Ponzi Scheme
Authorities in Russia started looking into the “Crypto Fund Executive Gets Investment Fund” Finiko in 2021 on suspicion of fraud and organized crime. After taking millions of dollars from unsuspecting investors, the probe revealed that the fund had been a Ponzi scheme. Finiko was a pyramid scheme that fooled investors into thinking they had invested in a cryptocurrency fund from 2018 until 2021. Kirill Doronin, who reaped the benefits of the swindle, gave master seminars nationwide, drawing in thousands of customers.
Doronin established a criminal organization with his associates to routinely steal from the public. The con artists would approach would-be customers while boasting about their “unique automatic profit generation system” and how it “guaranteed” huge profits in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Users would initially be able to withdraw their dividends in Bitcoin. However, investors’ luck began to turn in 2021 when the value of Finiko’s Crypto Fund Executive Gets token began to decline. The company’s website and offices went dark within a month, leaving investors nothing. Despite Donorin’s promises that the cryptocurrency fund was experiencing technical issues, it came to light that his associates had already fled the country with the investors’ money.
The investigation found that numerous clients had invested in the fake fund by taking out loans or selling their residences. It came to light that the investment fund was a Ponzi scheme, with payments made to previous clients using the funds of new participants. The Russian government’s internal affairs ministry (MDV) estimated that the company had deceived over 10,000 people out of over 5 billion rubles (about $55 million) in that period.
First Finiko Executive Sentenced
The Vakhitovsky District Court in Kazan found Lilia Nurieva, an executive of Finiko, guilty of investment fraud. Nurieva, who had a vital role in the encryption conspiracy, got a “mild” penalty for cooperating with the prosecutors.
Initially, the ex-executive was handed a four-and-a-half-year term for his organized crime and fraud involvement. The time Nurieva spent in pretrial detention will be factored into her sentence, reducing her prison term to three years. Despite prosecutors ‘ requests for a longer term, local media outlets state. A pre-trial deal reduced the Russian executive’s sentence from six and a half years. Nurieva avoided a possible ten-year prison sentence because of this bargain.
In addition, the executive’s full admission of guilt and cooperation with the inquiry allowed him to stand trial apart from the other defendants. The prosecutor’s claims against her client were “fair,” according to Maria Belousova, her counsel. She went on to say that out of all the accused, Nurieva was the only one who had put her money into the plan. Before joining the group, the ex-Finiko CEO reportedly put 40 million rubles into the investment fund (Belousova):
Doronin and the other nine defendants are still awaiting trial. The Vakhitovsky court got the indictment on April 27 once. The accused also faces charges of large-scale fraud perpetrated by an organized organization and of creating a criminal association.
