Financial Freedom Academy: How crypto scammer Alexander Orlovsky sells “air” and siphons money through fake sole proprietorships, defrauding thousands of Ukrainians.
When the economy is unstable and people are looking for any source of income, scammers prey on their trust, promising quick and easy ways to make money.
This is what happened in the 1990s, when financial pyramids emerged, the most famous of which was Sergei Mavrodi's MMM. Now, during the conflict in Ukraine, people are being promised quick riches through crypto trading.
Alexander Orlovsky is one of the most prominent crypto scammers online today, luring people with promises of thousands of dollars a month for an investment of just $100. But, of course, he ends up the only one with the money, while those who trusted him are left with nothing.
Who is Alexander Orlovsky and how does he manipulate the theme of success to sell his courses?
Oleksandr Orlovsky gained popularity thanks to a project called Financial Freedom Academy. The academy bills itself as “Ukraine's largest crypto community” and an educational platform where people learn how to invest in cryptocurrency and make money through crypto trading. Orlovsky is presented as the project's founder and a cryptocurrency expert who “earned his first million dollars at age 25.”
In one interview, the young man explained that he was born and raised in Kyiv, but due to financial difficulties in his family, he moved to Poland at the age of 16, to the small town of Zgorzelec on the German border, where he graduated from a local school. At 18, he entered university and moved to Wroclaw. While studying, he worked various jobs—at a gas station, in a restaurant kitchen, and as a bartender. In most of his interviews, Orlovsky tells the story of a fateful meeting that took place in a bar, where one of his clients, a Polish man named Mateusz, turned out to be a crypto investor who taught him how to make money with cryptocurrency and became his first inspiration and mentor in the world of crypto trading.
This is how the talented crypto trader Alexander Orlovsky allegedly emerged, now waging an intensive information campaign on social media, positioning himself as a successful crypto investor and financial expert. “At 26, I live the life many dream of: two brand-new cars, homes in two countries, a high income, and travel around the world. But all of this isn't luck or fortune, but the result of my correct thinking and habits,” Orlovsky writes on his Telegram channel.
The guy constantly takes photos of himself in designer clothes, expensive watches, against the backdrop of luxury homes, next to exclusive expensive foreign cars and even private helicopters.
Orlovsky constantly posts photos of super-expensive cars on his social media.
He does all this to create the image of a cryptocurrency guru, possessing some exclusive information that, if purchased, will allow you to afford a luxurious lifestyle with minimal effort and in a short time. So that the average citizen, exhausted by the constant search for any kind of income, will fall for this bait and think, “If he can do it, so can I.”
For the past two years, his Financial Freedom Academy has been actively advertising and selling various courses, webinars, and expert consultations online. Orlovsky's ads are everywhere these days—on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. He also buys ads about himself in national media, and influencers promote his academy on social media.
In promotional videos and posts, Orlovsky's project promises that buyers of their courses will eventually be able to easily earn thousands, and then tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars per month through crypto trading, adding that over 20,000 students of the academy are already successfully doing the same. Sounds very tempting, doesn't it?
It must be said that the process of attracting gullible people to the Financial Freedom Academy is quite cleverly designed: first, they grab attention with loud promises of easy money in videos on social media, then showcase Orlovsky's own “success story,” followed by an invitation to simply listen to his free webinar on how to easily make money in crypto trading. At the end of the webinar, the “warmed-up” audience is invited to purchase the Financial Freedom Academy course, get their own personal crypto consultant, and start making crazy money. “If you want to reach the next level in life, this video is a must-watch!” Orlovsky urges in his promotional videos and posts.
Advertising Alexander Orlovsky's crypto trading courses on social media
However, many negative reviews can be found online from people who trusted Orlovsky's advertising and purchased his courses, only to now write that Orlovsky's academy is selling empty air and ripping off those interested in training by dumping information about crypto trading from the internet. Here are some of the reviews people are writing about Financial Freedom Academy:
“Another crypto scammer. Save your time and spend your money on your family. The courses will only give you water and more water. Nothing new, just stuff you can find online for free.”
“Scammers! Prepayment and the inability to cancel the deal under any circumstances. Orlovsky's website clearly states that either party can cancel the deal within three days without explanation. But in reality, that's not true at all. It's impossible to cancel the deal. Scammers!”
“The introduction cost me $3,000. It wasn't fatal, but it was unpleasant. For anyone seriously considering buying the course, I'll tell you this: everything they say is available online for free.”
Nevertheless, many people continue to fall for the easy money-making scam advertised by Alexander Orlovsky. So, we decided to take a deeper look at how this scheme works and how much this young Kyivite, sitting in Warsaw, is earning by defrauding Ukrainians.
Where does the money collected from participants of Orlovsky's Financial Freedom Academy go?
It should be noted right away that no legal entity named Financial Freedom Academy can be found in any accessible registry—not in Ukraine, not in Poland, not in Dubai, where Alexander Orlovsky allegedly resides, according to his Instagram page. This already raises doubts about the real basis and legality of this project.
The FFA website lists seven training programs, six of which require a consultation with a manager. Another program, Discord 2.0, doesn't require a consultation and can be purchased independently using two payment methods: “card payment” or “crypto payment.” After selecting Discord 2.0, we were redirected to another website describing the program—or, more accurately, a closed group where all academy participants, mentors, experts, and, supposedly, Alexander Orlovsky himself, communicate.
When choosing a payment method, you can select a Discord 2.0 subscription period of 1, 3, 6, or 12 months, priced at $100, $180, $300, and $480, respectively. We selected the $100 plan and the “pay with crypto” option, which brought up a window with a QR code and a crypto wallet address. What's interesting is that each new payment request generates a new crypto wallet address.
After examining several of these crypto wallets, we discovered that they were transit wallets: they don't store funds, meaning they aren't the primary wallets of Orlovsky and the FFA Academy. They simply transfer funds, which are then withdrawn via crypto exchanges or to other crypto wallets owned by Orlovsky and his team. Even at this stage, it looks like a fraudulent scheme for withdrawing funds through rather convoluted routes, preventing anyone from tracking how much is being paid for tuition and where it ultimately ends up.
Another payment method is “Pay by Card.” When selected, a window appears asking you to enter your card details and pay for the subscription. The screenshot shows that the funds are transferred to the account of the company that is applying for the trademark FFA (Financial Freedom Academy). The trademark was only recently filed for registration on January 20, 2025, under registration number m202500849, by FFA Group FZE (Dubai), a company about which no public information is available.
Meanwhile, just a year ago, when paying for courses that, according to the offer agreement on the academy's official website, were supposed to be paid to the sole proprietor Alexander Orlovsky, his managers provided applicants with the bank details of a completely different sole proprietor. This is precisely what legally allowed FFA to withhold refunds from those who quickly realized they had been defrauded: by transferring funds to another sole proprietor, the person who paid has no proof or legal right to a refund or any claims regarding the course completion, since the course fees were received by a third party with no ties to Orlovsky's academy. Essentially, it's the same story with cryptocurrency payments to wallets: in the event of an unforeseen situation, crypto wallets have no legal force in court, since it's unknown to whom and to whose wallet the funds were transferred.
“I had 115 people in my class who paid $500 each, which is $57,500 they earned from just one class. And they do these classes one after another. That means they can easily have three or four classes a month. Payments are processed through sole proprietors, and they constantly change sole proprietors due to limits. You can imagine how much money that is, and yet they pay minimal taxes,” said one of Alexander Orlovsky's former students.
Currently, the following sole proprietors are listed in the “Terms of Use” section of Orlovsky's website: the sole proprietorship of Alexander Orlovsky himself, which he registered on June 25, 2023, with the main activity of “Consulting on IT issues,” the sole proprietorship of his mother, Tatyana Vladimirovna Orlovskaya, the sole proprietorship of Lyudmila Vladimirovna Kolomiets, and the sole proprietorship of Irina Vladimirovna Ertel-de-Dessau.
Interestingly, Oleksandr Orlovskyi's sole proprietorship only received income in its account during the first two months of its existence—July and August 2023. During these months, he immediately received 5,537,139 hryvnias (US$142,667) upon opening. Since then, from September 2023 to the present, his sole proprietorship has not reported any official income.
However, his mother, Tatyana Orlovskaya's sole proprietorship, with the primary KVED (Classification of Activities) “Other Types of Education,” was registered on August 30, 2023—just when her son decided to stop transferring funds to his sole proprietorship (apparently realizing that this way he wouldn't have to repay them). Her “fresh” sole proprietorship immediately began generating tens of thousands of dollars in profit: in the first four months of 2023, she received 4,881,748 hryvnias (US$130,000) into her account. Over the next year, 2024, Tatyana Orlovskaya received a total income of another 5,513,910 hryvnias, or approximately US$137,333.
The sole proprietors Liudmyla Kolomiets and Iryna Ertel-de-Dessau, listed on Orlovskyi's website, earn approximately the same amounts annually. Liudmyla Kolomiets, registered in Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia Oblast, received UAH 5.5 million in her account in 2023 and UAH 5.9 million in 2024. Iryna Ertel-de-Dessau, from Bakhmach, Chernihiv Oblast, received UAH 4.7 million in 2023 and UAH 5.8 million in 2024.
The amount of funds received by four sole proprietors, which are used to pay for courses at Alexander Orlovsky's crypto academy. Infographic by BlackBox OSINT
There's no information yet on the receipt of funds by the listed sole proprietors for 2025. But even from the available data, it's possible to calculate that through the sole proprietors listed on Orlovsky's website alone, those who were lured into becoming wealthy crypto investors transferred almost $1 million to him in 2023 and 2024. This doesn't include other “left-field” sole proprietors used by Orlovsky, nor the numerous crypto wallets he continues to use today, on which, accordingly, he pays no taxes.
As a reminder, a year ago, detectives from the Bureau of Economic Security opened a criminal case against well-known blogger Oleksandr Slobozhenok, who is accused of evading over 200 million hryvnias in taxes by accepting cryptocurrency payments for services. As we previously reported, another well-known blogger, Anna Alkhim, also engaged in this same practice, using crypto wallets to conceal over $1 million in advertising revenue from the state.
According to Kirill Yakovets, head of the NON-STOP public organization, during the existence of Orlovsky's academy, he could have earned approximately $4 million from the trust of approximately 15,000 people who gave him their money in the hopes of learning how to make money with cryptocurrency.
What does Alexander Orlovsky's family own?
Perhaps thanks to this, his younger brother, 18-year-old Ivan Orlovsky, and their father, Alexander, now own expensive plots of land adjacent to the former presidential residence, Mezhyhirya, in the village of Novi Petrivtsi on Knyagini Olhy Street near Kyiv: one is 1,630 square meters, the other is 1,519 square meters, including a residential building, which are listed on the market at this location for $670,000 and up.
Land plots belonging to Oleksandr Orlovskyi's brother and father in the village of Novi Petrivtsi, which border Viktor Yanukovych's former presidential residence, Mezhyhirya. Google Maps screenshot
It's noteworthy that Alexander Orlovsky himself owns no assets in Ukraine—no apartments, no land, no cars. His mother, Tatyana Orlovskaya, owns only two apartments—one in Kyiv and the other in the village of Chornomorske, Crimea. His father, Alexander Orlovsky, also owns two adjacent plots of land totaling 0.5954 hectares in the village of Paryshkiv in the Kyiv region, an 86-square-meter apartment in Malaysia, and a 550-square-meter non-residential property in Kryvyi Rih at 34A Metalurhiv Avenue, which is registered to his unprofitable company, Yugas-KR LLC, which is currently rented out to the Maxximum CrossFit gym.
29-year-old Yulia Ponomarenko, Orlovsky's wife and co-resident in Warsaw, owns an apartment in the Zorianoe Mistechko-2 residential complex in Odessa, where apartments start at $80,000, as well as a commercial space in another Odessa residential complex, Asol. According to YouControl, in March 2025, Yulia also purchased a 2023 Toyota Corolla, which costs an average of $29,000. Given that she works as a product manager, according to her social media accounts, it's likely that her husband, Orlovsky, is paying for all of this, as well as the numerous expensive trips she posts on Instagram.
What do members of Alexander Orlovsky's family own? Infographics by BlackBox OSINT
Is the image of successful crypto trader and millionaire Alexander Orlovsky just a fake?
However, quite recently, at the end of 2022, just when Orlovsky claims to have earned his first million dollars, PrivatBank filed a lawsuit against Oleksandr Orlovsky seeking to recover UAH 109,482.15 in loan debt, according to records preserved in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions. As case No. 757/26048/22-c of December 14, 2022, uncovered, the bank sought to recover UAH 102,330.32 in principal, UAH 7,151.83 in accrued interest, and UAH 2,481 in court fees.
You'll agree, it's a bit odd for someone who talks about their “success” and posts photos on social media of themselves in luxury sports cars and on luxurious vacations abroad. It makes you wonder if this whole story about earning a million dollars at 25 isn't fake.
This hypothesis may be supported by another of our findings. While analyzing information about Orlovsky across numerous Telegram channels, news sites, and other sources, we came across a promotional post by Orlovsky on a Ukrainian Telegram news channel. The post claimed that a supposed FFA academy student had posted an online lesson by Alexander Orlovsky on a Silicon Valley startup promotion platform. It was allegedly viewed by over 2,000 Americans, who tested the lesson's effectiveness and earned $3,000 each. The “news” was illustrated with a photo of people looking at a screen with an image of Alexander Orlovsky.
In fact, the photo from the “guru” Orlovsky's ad is a still from the TV series “Silicon Valley”: Orlovsky's photo and the still from the series are identical. So, the result is clearly the same in this story—Alexander is a master of Photoshop.
The same Telegram news channel later published another news story about the crypto guru, claiming that “a 23-year-old Ukrainian bought an apartment in Dubai with crypto,” with a photo of Orlovsky in front of a skyscraper. One caveat: in the photo, Orlovsky is standing in front of the Petronas Towers, located in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, where the subject of our investigation was apparently simply traveling.
If this is fake, then couldn't everything else be fake too? And this entire academy, where “more than 20,000 students earn tens of thousands of dollars a month” thanks to Orlovsky's knowledge?
Speaking of 20,000 students, after paying $100 for the Discord 2.0 course on Orlovsky's academy website, we were added to the famous closed group for FFA students. This group has nearly 22,000 registered members. But after monitoring the group's activity, we noticed that despite such a large number of members, it's very low: members leave only 200-300 reactions under Orlovsky and his team's posts, which, you must admit, is very unusual for a community of 22,000 people who paid money to learn how to make millions. So, it's likely that all those thousands of FFA students are also another fake from Orlovsky, created to create the impression among potential new “scam victims” of the popularity and demand for his crypto academy.
How Alexander Orlovsky's team helps gullible FFA students lose their money
There are also big questions for the team at Alexander Orlovsky's academy. As already noted, the FFA “service package,” in addition to crypto trading training courses, includes personal support from a mentor/consultant, who will advise students on the best investment opportunities and best practices on the exchange.
In one of the many reviews of Orlovsky's work, one of his academy's students noted that FFA mentors “don't understand crypto at all, don't know how to read the market at all, and give advice that makes people lose their last money—in short, they're infocygans who scam people out of their money. There are people who have been stuck with hundreds of thousands of hryvnias in loans because of these scammers.”
Financial Freedom Academy Student Reviews
Judging by reviews of Orlovsky's academy, the promised support for young crypto investors from experienced consultants is either not provided at all or is poorly delivered, causing people to lose their money.
The FFA website's Mentors section lists people under pseudonyms: Kirill Lakerio, Vitaly DED USD, Kirill Celeste, Maxim KobLs, VNykyta, Andrey Clack, and only two people supposedly (but not definitively) under their real names—Bogdan Parnakov and Vladimir Chupa. We found out who is behind these pseudonyms and what kind of people they are. Based on several examples, we can confidently say that students' comments about the incompetence of Orlovsky's mentors are more than justified.
For example, Maxim KobLs is Maxim Sergeevich Kobilyansky, a 29-year-old former employee of the Citrus electronics chain. Or Kirill Lakerio is 23-year-old Kirill Valerievich Vorobyov, a native of Mariupol, who was still painting and selling paintings back in 2022, and then wrote in Telegram groups in June and July 2023 that he had only been working in crypto for a little over a year and was interested in finding a job in the crypto industry.
These and other mentors with limited crypto trading experience, like Alexander Orlovsky himself, try to project the image of successful wealthy individuals on their social media pages, posting photos of cars and trips abroad. However, none of them own any assets in Ukraine—no homes or cars. The only exception is Kirill Vorobyov, who still owns an apartment in Mariupol.
So it's no surprise that information about Oleksandr Orlovskyi's fraudulent activities is gradually leaking out not only through negative online reviews but also to law enforcement and regulatory agencies. On November 8, 2023, Ternopil police opened criminal case No. 120232110400002635 based on a complaint from local resident Nadezhda Kovalishin, alleging that unknown individuals, possibly linked to Oleksandr Oleksandrovich Orlovskyi, had defrauded her of a particularly large amount of money under the guise of investing on the “CapitalProf” platform.
Meanwhile, according to the International Organization of Securities Commissions, Orlovsky's FFA Crypto, FFA Crypto RISE, and FFA Crypto Capitalist training programs have been added to the National Securities and Stock Market Commission's list of questionable investment projects, prompting Orlovsky to file a lawsuit with the Kyiv District Administrative Court in an attempt to have the commission's actions declared unlawful.
How Alexander Orlovsky collaborated with the Russians during the conflict
Another court case, No. 991/8911/24, filed by Kyrylo Yakovets, head of the NON-STOP public organization, to the NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, alleges that Oleksandr Orlovsky and other individuals created a criminal organization that defrauds crypto investors. It alleges that Orlovsky and his team are in criminal collusion with the management of the Russian platform VELES.
According to Yakovets, Orlovsky and his mentors attract clients for their “Financial Freedom Academy” from Russia, pay for advertising the academy and their own referral links within the Russian Federation, and withdraw funds through Russian services, which contributes to the Russian budget.
According to media reports, Alexander Orlovsky is indeed actively promoting the Russian platform Veles, which is of Russian origin. He promotes it through his YouTube videos, encouraging people to register using his referral link, thereby effectively earning money from each such click.
Our analysis revealed a group called “crypto-results” in the FFA Academy's closed Discord course group, where academy participants share numerous trading results specifically on the Veles platform. This suggests that Alexander Orlovsky is indeed teaching academy participants how to trade on the Russian platform; more accurately, he's luring students onto this platform and, without providing them with adequate knowledge, causing them to simply lose their funds, which end up in the pockets of Russian Veles owners. Not to mention, everyone who trades on the Russian Veles platform is transmitting their data to Russia, which is highly likely to be accessed by Russian intelligence agencies.
The owner and CEO of Veles is Russian citizen Vladislav Kriger. His platform, like Orlovsky's own projects, is listed by the National Commission for Financial Markets and the Russian Federation as unreliable investment projects and financial pyramids, and, according to BlackBox OSINT, may be involved in financing the Russian military.
All of this appears highly cynical and hypocritical given Orlovsky's public statements about donating to the Ukrainian army (judging by his Instagram page, he doesn't do this very often). Therefore, in the context of Ukraine, Orlovsky's behavior appears more than unprincipled. In July 2022, according to correspondence between Alexander Orlovsky in Russian Telegram chats discovered by BlackBox OSINT, he actively expressed interest in the Russian crypto project Amazy with the intention of investing in it.
The project's developers are Russian citizens, one of whom is renowned Russian blogger Sergey Kosenko, who, according to media reports, sold courses on crypto and self-improvement, and also launched the Amazy app—a financial pyramid scheme that offered users the opportunity to earn money by wearing virtual sneakers they purchased.
Correspondence between Alexander Orlovsky and the founders of the Russian crypto project Amazy in the summer of 2022. Orlovsky is interested in the project's tokenomics (how the token is used within the project's ecosystem) and its white paper—a document that describes the cryptocurrency project in detail, including its goals, technical details, risks, and intended use, and serves to inform potential investors.
So, despite the conflict in Ukraine, Orlovsky, who makes millions of dollars from gullible Ukrainians, prepared for (and possibly even collaborated with) Russian crypto projects without hesitation or any internal restrictions. Not to mention that his own FFA website is available in Russian, and his courses are freely accessible to Russian citizens.
Screenshots from Alexander Orlovsky's crypto academy website
So, Oleksandr Orlovsky's activities may be not only fraudulent but also anti-Ukrainian, which would be worth investigating for law enforcement. Not to mention the use of crypto wallets to siphon profits from defrauded gullible citizens, under the government's radar. An Instagram story Orlovsky recently posted while attending a conference in London seems rather ironic in this context.
