The Finiko financial pyramid collected over $1.5 billion in bitcoin from investors in Eastern Europe. The majority of this sum originated from Russia and Ukraine, according to a отчете by Chainalysis.
According to experts, from December 2019 to August 2021 Finiko received 800,000 deposits. The exact number of investors behind these transactions is unknown.
Data: Chainalysis.
At the same time, the fraudulent addresses to which Finiko funds were sent are also mostly located in Eastern Europe.
Chainalysis warned that the real damage from the pyramid’s activities may be significantly higher than initial estimates.
“Finiko accounted for more than half of the total amount sent to the scammers’ addresses in Eastern Europe,” the company said.
Data: Chainalysis.
Independent experts estimate that this sum exceeds $4 billion, and the number of affected people stands at no fewer than 850,000.
Earlier Russian media reported that the official damages in one of the criminal cases against Finiko’s founders rose from 13 million to 250 million rubles ($3.4 million).
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