Russian Crypto Pyramid Schemes Masquerade as Brokers, Costing Victims $13M on Average
Russia’s financial underworld is evolving. Gone are the days when pyramid schemes simply peddled loans with false promises. Now, they’ve adopted a more sophisticated guise—posing as cryptocurrency brokers offering too-good-to-be-true returns on digital assets.
Sberbank, the nation’s largest bank, reports these fraudulent operations now drain an average of 1 billion rubles ($12.7M) per scheme. The shift mirrors global trends where bad actors exploit crypto’s opacity to lure unsuspecting investors.
‘They’ve traded loan sharks for algorithmic wolves,’ says Stanislav Kuznetsov, Sberbank’s deputy chairman. His team identified 38 such operations in 2023 alone, working with law enforcement to dismantle them.
The warning comes as Russia grapples with crypto’s Wild West phase—where legitimate blockchain innovation collides with old-school financial fraud. No specific coins or exchanges were named in the schemes, suggesting scammers are casting wide nets rather than targeting particular tokens.
