In May, a 20-year-old online business founder contacted the police, reporting that unknown men, posing as law enforcement officers, had intimidated him and forced him to transfer $250,000 in cryptocurrency.
Operatives from the National Police’s internal security and cyberpolice units discovered that four criminals, having estimated the entrepreneur’s approximate income, decided to exploit the situation. The conspirators posed as law enforcement officers and presented the victim with false accusations of collaborating with Russia. They threatened the man with a lengthy imprisonment on fabricated charges of treason and offered to “resolve the issue” for $250,000, promising to close the fictitious “case.”
The criminals forced the victim to transfer his own crypto assets totaling $250,000 USDT, equivalent to over 10 million UAH. On the same day, the criminals cashed out the funds using one of the exchange services.
The internal security officers and cyberpolice specialists identified the extortionists, who turned out to have no connection to law enforcement agencies.
The cyberpolice tracked the movement of the crypto assets from the victim to the perpetrators and collected digital evidence of the illegal activity.
In cooperation with investigators from the Investigative Department of the Main Department of the National Police in Kyiv, under the procedural guidance of the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office, the identities of four residents of the capital and Kyiv region were established, and an operation to apprehend them was planned.
Police conducted a series of simultaneous searches in Kyiv, Kyiv region, and Cherkasy region at the residences and registration addresses of the fraudsters and their family members, as well as in their vehicles.
The police seized bank cards, computer equipment, mobile phones, luxury cars, fake journalist IDs, and public order protection group member IDs, ammunition, and cash totaling nearly $7,000 and over 63,000 UAH.
The police have charged the suspects under Part 4 of Article 189 (Extortion) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The perpetrators face up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property.
Currently, the court is considering measures to hold the suspects in custody.
