In 2023, the Bank of Russia reports that it had identified 5,735 different entities (companies, projects, individual entrepreneurs and others) with signs of illegal activity , including signs of financial pyramids.
According to a report from the Bank of Russia, this is 15.5% more than a year earlier, but the “lifespan” of such projects has become shorter and the “average bill” has decreased.
The Bank of Russia claims it continued “to improve the information space monitoring system, which is used to identify illegal activities in the financial market, including automated assessment of content published by illegal immigrants.”
The bank further noted that this made it possible “to more quickly identify illegal schemes.”
Against the background of the transition of consumers to a remote format for receiving financial services, “increasing confidence in information from social media, the majority of financial pyramids, pseudo-brokers and even illegal lenders operated via the Internet.”
To “promote” fraudulent projects, the organizers used social networks and instant messengers.
The number of illegal participants in the financial market “who use crypto-themes is growing.”
In 2022, every second pseudo-investment project “attracted cryptocurrency.”
In 2023, almost all pyramid schemes and illegal brokers “offered investments in internal tokens or accepted contributions in cryptocurrency.”
Basically, these are small pseudo-investment projects “that are created and operate on the Internet. Information about them is distributed through social networks and the Telegram messenger.”
The organizers actively attract lifestyle bloggers “with a large audience for advertising.”
As stated in the update, the most popular methods of “transferring money to the pyramid remain foreign payment services and cryptocurrencies.”
More than 45% of the identified pyramids “offered investors to use the systems of foreign payment service providers. Almost 1,500 fraudulent projects accepted contributions in cryptocurrency, which, among other things, helps the organizers and beneficiaries of the schemes maintain anonymity.
The Bank of Russia began “to initiate measures that make it possible to simultaneously restrict access not only to domains, but also to all subdomains that are used by subjects of illegal activities.”
Fraudsters often created resources “with the same content after blocking the main site. In 2023, the domains and subdomains of more than 1,500 financial pyramids that used a similar mechanism were blocked.”
Almost 44% of illegal lenders “promoted their services only online and did not have offices.”
They mostly used social media pages and groups, or popular classifieds platforms, “without creating permanent websites.”
In 2023, there was a downward trend in “the number of organizations that provided loans secured by property.”
There were 9% fewer of them identified (in 2022 – 870 subjects, in 2023 – 792 subjects).
For more statistics and a detailed breakdown, check here.