Developer of Russian Forex pyramid website faces 10 years in prison
The man, born in 1988, was responsible for the technical aspect of the website’s work and got 10% of all deposits made by investors.
When it comes to financial fraud, the management of the scam is not the single party to be held responsible for the illegal actions. FinanceFeeds has already reported about such an approach when it comes to handling binary options fraud, and now, Russian prosecutors have demonstrated the same rigorous attitude towards an “IT guy” working for a Forex pyramid.
The police of Russia’s Amur district have recently completed their investigation into the actions of a Blagoveshchensk citizen, born in 1988. He is involved in a financial fraud scheme which has seen more than 300 people scammed.
According to local news sources, the name of the company that defrauded the investors is “Money-Trade”.
The police report does not mention the names of the defendants and the business. The police, however, elaborates that the website offered investors to pump money which was supposed to be traded on the Forex market. In March 2013, the police started receiving complaints from investors who were unable to withdraw their money. Eventually, the website stopped operating.
The police have conducted searches of the company’s premises and have confiscated equipment and documents. Fraud charges have been pressed against six employees of the firm – two of them cannot be located, however, and are hunted by the police.
One of the defendants has reached a settlement with investigators to have a separate legal case against him. The man in question was the developer of the website of the financial pyramid. He did the programming for the website and was responsible for all the technical aspects of its functioning. He got 10% of each investor deposit, thus receiving more than RUB 25 million (USD 439,344) in total.
The police have filed the documents with relation to this man with the court in Blagoveshchensk. The law envisages a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for such a violation.
The number of financial pyramids in Russia remains high. Marat Safiulin, who heads the Federal Public-State Foundation for the Protection of Investor and Shareholder Rights, estimates that every 48 hours, a new financial pyramid emerges in Russia.