Police in Bashkiria are investigating a group involved in illegal financial operations benefiting crypto exchanges, online casinos, and fraudulent call centers, as reported by Kommersant.
According to the case materials, in 2023, the alleged organizers of the group, brothers Azamat and Arslan Kuvatov, rented several offices in central Ufa. They recruited mules through advertisements, using their cards to cash out funds or transfer them to crypto wallets and send them abroad. Operations were conducted on platforms such as TradeMO, Gate, and PayTop.
Orders were accepted around the clock, primarily from the shadow business sector. The group, consisting of about 20 people, earned between 1.5% and 15% depending on the transfer amount.
Preliminary estimates suggest that since the beginning of 2025, the perpetrators transferred at least 3 billion rubles, earning over 50 million rubles in the process.
During searches, specialized equipment and five laptops, more than 120 mobile phones, 180 bank cards belonging to mules, over 300 SIM cards, 3 million rubles in cash, and cryptocurrency worth 15 million rubles were seized.
On August 25, the Lenin District Court of Ufa placed the Kuvatov brothers under house arrest. The mules, who gave confessional statements, were not subjected to preventive measures. The investigation is ongoing.
Back in December 2024, the Bank, in collaboration with Rosfinmonitoring, began developing a platform to monitor suspicious transactions by individuals. The initiative aims to combat mules providing their cards for shadow transactions.
By the end of the current year, Russian banks will gain access to the “Transparent Blockchain” service, which will allow them to link clients to cryptocurrency transactions.
Earlier, Ignat Likhunov, founder of the legal agency Cartesius, warned in an interview with ForkLog about the threat of detention centers filling up with Bitcoin traders.
