The desire of a person to invest a little money in some project and, doing nothing, earn a lot, is as old as the world. This desire was also used by the heroes of the fairy tale “The Golden Key”, suggesting Pinocchio to bury five gold pieces in the Field of Wonders in the Land of Fools. Only the lazy one does not know about the project of the unforgettable Sergei Mavrodi.
But, oddly enough, the number of “Pinocchio” and “laziness dove” does not decrease, as well as the number of followers of Lisa Alice and Sergei Mavrodi. They keep up with the times and master the cryptocurrency market, in which ordinary citizens, who have heard about the fabulous growth of Bitcoin, do not understand, but at the same time they firmly believe that it is worth buying some cryptocurrency for a hundred dollars and you can do nothing, because it will bring millions in profits.
The essence of the activities of scammers in the cryptocurrency market is the same as in MMM – to lure as many customers as possible, sell them worthless candy wrappers (in this case, electronic ones), convincing that this dummy is actually a highly profitable product that can bring those the wildest dividends.
So did the creators of the “cryptocurrency exchange” PointPay. In quotation marks, because initially this project was not an exchange, although it was cleverly disguised as one. Moreover, there are simply no standards for an online product that called itself a cryptocurrency exchange, by which it can be determined whether it is a fake or a real product. The main thing is to win the trust of the client and get money from him. What did the creators of the “exchange” PointPay understand. The project was created in 2018 and for several years was engaged in collecting investors’ money, positioning itself not just as a cryptocurrency exchange, but as a “cryptocurrency bank”, which supposedly gave customers the opportunity not only to buy their own product – the so-called PXP tokens – but also receive other services similar to those provided in any bank: have deposits, exchange cryptocurrencies, trade them, receive loans, and so on.
The promotion of the project has borne fruit – at least $ 50 million was collected. However, a surprise awaited investors further – PXP tokens, in which they invested money and which, according to the assurances of the exchange management, should bring thousands of percent of profit, are falling in price. If I may say so, because even before this fall they cost practically nothing, that is, they have nowhere to fall:
The exchange’s token is now worth just under two cents, and according to coinbase.com, PointPay is currently “87.05% below its all-time high of $0.15.” That is, the PXP token was once worth as much as 15 cents.
It was at this price that those who wanted to invest in cryptocurrency bought it, keeping in mind that Bitcoin also once cost about the same. And in which case 15 cents is not a pity. They bought, of course, not just one PXP token.
But the essence of how much they heated a person – by 15 cents or 15 thousand dollars – does not change. Because the project was originally aimed specifically at deception, no one was going to work in it the way other crypto exchanges work. He was aimed at one thing – to collect as much money as possible and disappear.
According to sources in the PointPay company itself, after the number of investors reached 70,000 people, and the amount of money in the company’s accounts was $50 million, the project became. The management changed, and the founder of PointPay, Ilya Zavyalov, disappeared. After investors began to panic, there were reports in the press where the main culprit for the project’s failure was called the project’s CEO, a certain Andrey Svyatov, who had worked in the company from the very beginning. Allegedly, he withdrew the money, but Zavyalov had nothing to do with it.
Following this, materials appeared that bleached Svyatov and shifted all the blame to Zavyalov. The situation is confused.
After analyzing all the available materials (by the way, they very quickly disappear from open access – it is clear that someone is systematically cleaning the Internet), we come to the conclusion that Ilya Zavyalov was undoubtedly the organizer of the scam. But Andrei Svyatov was also involved in it – at the level of technical performance. Just then a classic situation turned out – one swindler (Zavyalov) threw another (Svyatov). According to Svyatov himself, he was promised 10% of tokens for his work. But Zavyalov did not fulfill his promise, although these tokens are not worth anything. Classic greed. Here Svyatov, in revenge, decided to lay out everything he knows and at the same time dissociate himself from a deliberately fraudulent scheme.
True, he knows little. However, he understood that the PointPay project was originally a notorious scam. But he worked in it. His main task was to attract investors, and those same 70,000 people who invested money in PointPay – this is exactly the merit of Svyatov. When the project collapsed, Svyatov and his brother Alexander, who also worked at PointPay, tried to get compensation from Zavyalov as payment for silence. However, he disappeared in the US and changed phone numbers. Svyatov then disappeared for a month, trying to find Zavyalov and hiding from creditors and the PointPay team, whom he hired and who were left without the promised salary. The most “smart” also bought tokens for themselves, often with credit money – after all, they were not paid so much for their work.
When it was not possible to find Zavyalov, and the prospect of a meeting with law enforcement agencies became inevitable, Svyatov decided to disown his participation in the scam and put forward the version that he had also been deceived. And he tried to transfer all the arrows to Ilya Zavyalov.
There is very little information about both of them – neither one nor the other tried to “shine” in front of the cameras. Which also confirms the version that PointPay was originally a fraudulent project – a normal crypto exchange needs advertising and transparency, this is one of the key elements in attracting customers.
Even their photos are difficult to find, which is rather strange, especially in the case of Svyatov:
However, with the images of Zavyalov it is even more difficult – only one photograph more or less suitable for identification is found:
It was preserved on the website of the Ivanovo Power Engineering University, whose graduate Ilya Zavyalov was invited there to some event as an honored guest in 2018.
And now remember how Ostap Bender shouted – “Remove the photographer, he interferes with my chess thinking.” Why leave your image once again if you know that a lot of people will be looking for you?
As for Andrey Svyatov, it was not possible to find out his biography – he appears in the PointPay project as a CEO out of nowhere. There are clearly promotional articles on the Internet advertising PointPay, but here he is already acting as the CEO of the project. Which also indirectly confirms that Andrey Svyatov perfectly understood what he was doing under the leadership of Ilya Zavyalov.
As for the organizer of the scam, little more is known about him. Ilya Nikolaevich Zavyalov was born on June 12, 1979 in the city of Ivanovo.
In 2001 he graduated from the Ivanovo State Power Engineering University. According to the official biography, in 2003-2016 he was “the head of foreign IT and financial and technical companies.”
Currently, he heads the FedPay Joint Stock Company. The main activities of the Company are: Promotion and development of the software complex of the Automated System for Processing Money Transfers (ASODP); FinTech services; Provision of consulting services for the implementation and integration of modern IT solutions, including in the field of compliance with the requirements of legislation on combating terrorism and money laundering, AML compliance, risk management, automation and standardization of financial calculations and other RegTech services .
That is, Mr. Zavyalov understands the subject.
However, Svyatov, offended by Zavyalov, told much more interesting information about him. It turns out that squeaky clean Russian entrepreneur Zavyalov owns real estate in the United States of America, where he owns two companies, a 27-story building, a 170-apartment Heather Village residential complex in Texas.
In addition, together with his ex-wife, he owned the dubious marriage office Dream Marrige, which was engaged in dating women from post-Soviet countries with men from the United States.
Particularly interesting in connection with the volume of Zavyalov’s real estate is the fact that the FedPay joint-stock company ended last year with a loss of 55,000 rubles:
Another interesting nuance is that the co-founder of FedPay JSC is a certain Mike Allen Brooks:
Who it was was not found out. It is only known that he is a US citizen. This raises the question – is Brooks involved in the PointPay scam, and if so, to what extent. But there is no information about this, so we will not guess.
However, with a high degree of probability, it can be assumed that Ilya Zavyalov did not organize PointPay’s “crypto bank” alone. This is confirmed by the message of the Russian police, which stated that on March 22, “as a result of operational-search measures carried out jointly with the employees of the Department “K” of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service of Russia and the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, the police located and detained a suspect in embezzlement of funds and property of a cryptocurrency exchange.”
The police added that “the detainee is one of the actual owners of the online trading platform, where digital financial assets could be bought, sold or exchanged for real money. The attacker controlled the movement of large amounts in cryptocurrency and their transfer to electronic wallets. Taking advantage of his position, he withdrew part of the funds and appropriated them.
