Odesa law enforcement officers detained two men — aged 48 and 41. They were served a notice of suspicion of fraud committed on a large scale.
«Opened a company» and even paid interest
The police found that in 2021, the scammers opened an IT software company and a website where they disseminated knowingly false information about business activities.
The plan to seize other people’s money by deceiving citizens belonged to a 48-year-old resident of Odesa. To implement the criminal intent, he engaged a 41-year-old acquaintance of the resident of Zhytomyr with a specialization in software development.
On the website, as well as in social networks and messengers, «IT people lured citizens to invest money in the development of their company, promising high interest rates on the deposit amount.
For the sake of plausibility and greater misleading people, the offenders even initially paid them small dividends at the expense of a part of the illegally obtained deposits. They also promised additional payments as a reward for attracting new investors.
Depositors’ amounts ranged from eight thousand to one million hryvnias.
Six months later, the fraudsters seized funds from gullible citizens totaling more than five million hryvnias.
After that, they deleted information about the company and stopped contacting us.
12 years in prison
The police detained the offenders. They were served a notice of suspicion under Parts 3 and 4 of Art. 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — fraud committed by prior conspiracy by a group of persons through illegal transactions using electronic computers, in a particularly large scale.
They now face imprisonment for up to 12 years with confiscation of property.
The court imposed on the suspects custody as a measure of restraint with the right to be released on bail in the amount of UAH 3.5 million each.