Russia’s central bank blacklists a pyramid scheme targeting Chia miners

On 5 October, the Bank of Russia identified signs of illegal activity in the financial market across 63 companies. Among them were several financial pyramid schemes that promised returns from investments in cryptocurrencies.

The CLOUDCHIA company positioned itself as ‘an international platform with data centres around the world’. It promised a passive income from Chia cloud mining of up to 225%. The regulator found that the project was based on a Ponzi scheme.

Signs of financial pyramid schemes were also identified at the companies Atomic Invest LTD, Energy Mining Gold, IQ Mining and Finance Express Limited.

The projects Bc crowdfunding.com, Nexus LLC (Bitfargo), CNBC Trust, Fleebit.com, Finance Delta LTD and Finance Option were found to exhibit signs of illegal professional participants in the securities market.

In September, the central bank also blacklisted the projects To The Mars, To The Moon and TTM Group Vladislav Utushkin, who had repeatedly appeared in live streams with the founder of the pyramid ‘Finiko’ Kirill Doronin to engage in mutual promotion to attract a new audience. Utushkin later said he had no connection to Doronin’s project.

Finiko itself, whose damage from its activities, according to independent estimates, exceeds $4 billion, was placed on the central bank’s blacklist in February.

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