From PR to financial pyramids: what’s behind Bohdan Prylepa’s Qmall crypto scam
Many of the heroes of our publications, if you believe the news from the Internet, have been re-educated from bandits and corrupt officials into volunteers and philanthropists. They feed and treat refugees and supply the army with everything it needs. True, only a few of them scour the world, buying up military equipment with their own hard-earned money, and drive trucks with medicines to a war-torn country.
Statements about helping refugees and the military, alas, often turn out to be naked PR and/or a bit of a "scam". For example, the beneficiaries of the WhiteBIT crypto exchange claimed that they were the largest "donors" in Ukraine. But we easily found out that WhiteBIT "donates" mostly not its own hard-earned money, but donations from outsiders.
While preparing our recent investigation "Crypto businessman Mykola Udyanskyi and the ruins of financial pyramids", we noticed the active "promotion" of one charity foundation on the Internet. It is called "The Ministry of Good Deeds named after Valentyna Prylepa".
As you can see, we came across this phenomenon while studying the news about Udyansky’s partner in a number of failed cryptocurrency projects and the Qmall exchange – Bogdan Prileр.
The main message of the selflessly posted notes ( for example ) is that "in one year, Bohdan Prilepa allocated more than 20 million hryvnias of personal funds to help the army and civilians." They also say that Bohdan Prylepa became imbued with the problems of the poor back in 2021, and "when the war began" he began to actively help the army.
Yes, yes, for him the war did not start in 2014. Until 24.02.2022, Bohdan Prylepa and his partner Mykola Udyanskyi were quietly "messing around" with residents of the aggressor country. However, they still maintain contact with the Russians, the same Fuad Futullayev. But that is not the main thing here.
In the "jeans" launched by Prylepa, it is especially noted that at the end of April last year, his friends, for, so to speak, more systematic work, founded a charitable foundation, naming it in honor of our cryptocurrency enthusiast’s mother. And Bohdan Prilepa himself allocated 20 million UAH of personal funds to the foundation, which were spent on supporting the disadvantaged and helping the military.
The author of these lines, out of curiosity, studied the registration data of the foundation named after mother Prylepa. Its financial statements for 2022, alas, contradict the statements of her offspring about tens of millions of hryvnias spent on the Armed Forces of Ukraine and charity.
As you can see, the fund was able to scrape together only 131 thousand UAH. If we look at the history of changes in the registration information of this legal entity, we will see something interesting.
The fund was indeed founded at the end of April 2022, but for almost a year there was almost no trace of Prylepa there (neither in the composition of the founders, nor in the name of the organization - it was simply called "The Ministry of Good Deeds of Ukraine"). It was created by a certain Stanislav Mizenko and a mid-level Dnipro businessman Oleh Terekhov.
According to the foundation’s reports on its Facebook page , Bohdan Prylepa "donated" something to it from time to time in 2022, but his donations clearly do not amount to 20 million. Prilepa officially "signed up" for the charity only on March 2, 2023, when it was renamed in honor of his mother.
Prilepa’s partner in EHOLD GRUP, Mykola Udyanskyi, also decided to use the military theme for PR. About a month ago, he announced that he would finance the venture of two young Kiev residents, who had previously earned money from auto tuning, to create a prototype of a new armored car. We will bypass the question of how feasible such a project is, when Ukraine already has serial models of armored cars (not to mention the models of our Western partners). But the way this good news was spreading across the Internet makes one suspect that Mykola Udyanskyi joined this startup only for PR.
By PR on the topic of charity and aid to the army, Bohdan Prylepa and Mykola Udyanskyi present themselves as defenders of the fatherland and fighters of the "economic front". Which, in turn, they use as a pretext to "roll" on the security forces with a request to protect them from the machinations of enemy intelligence agents. The latter are journalists and Internet resources that describe these heroes not as philanthropists and innovators, but as cunning swindlers. They slander that the "security forces", studying the "Udyanskyi-Prylepa lists", laugh uncontrollably in their offices. Because they find Internet resources in them that work with Ukrainian centers for special information and psychological operations.
And here we can make fun of the fact that Mykola Udyanskyi and Bohdan Prylepa spend money on the Ukrainian Armed Forces (in reality, almost none) that they earned together with citizens of the aggressor country.
Let us recall that, as we wrote earlier, in 2021, Mykola Udyanskyi and Bohdan Prylepa solemnly announced the launch of the WeWay crypto exchange. Together with them, Russian Fuad Fatullayev was declared a co-founder of the exchange. The latter was positioned either as the founder or as the CEO of the international company Yoola.
"The WeWay blockchain platform has every chance of becoming one of the most popular projects in the blockchain and NFT products market. There are all the prerequisites for this, in particular, the participation of two successful companies in the project," Mykola Udyanskyi stated from the pages of his pocket news portal Parliament.ua.
The fact that Yoola is allegedly taking part in the project should have lured crowds of investors stuffed with money. Because Yoola is a powerful media network through which hundreds of millions of dollars pass.
But here’s the problem: Fuad Futullayev, who acted as a co-founder of the Prylepa-Udyanskyi crypto exchange on behalf of Yoola, was never the founder or CEO of this international company. And it’s not even a fact that he worked in it.
Naturally, the crypto bubble, wrapped in a beautiful PR shell, burst as expected. Now the WeWay "coin" costs less than one American cent - $0.005.
After the start of the large-scale invasion of Russian invaders, Mykola Udyanskyi said that he left WeWay. But he is still listed as one of the shareholders in the financial statements of the British Weway Group Limited . And his partner, the Ukrainian Bohdan Prylepa, who lives in the UAE, is still listed as the director of WeWay Group together with the Russian Fuad Fatullaev. That is, some crumbs generated by the joint business with the Russian fall to Udyanskyi and Prylepa.
In general, all Udyanskyi-Prylepa’s "investments" in crypto projects are no less curious, which, I repeat, you can read about here . Here it is worth recalling one story, accompanied by a loud scandal.
"An important point that I would like to voice. If anything happens to anyone from my team or my family, in my opinion, Mykola Udyanskyi is personally behind it.
I am ready to voice this, because I no longer have a single dirty competitor. I do not have a single enemy. The only person who is capable of this and who voiced threats is Mykola Udyanskyi. I want absolutely everyone to know about this. If any actions of reprisal or kidnapping of employees follow, Mykola Udyanskyi is personally behind this."
This statement was made by the founder of the largest Ukrainian crypto exchange BTC-Alpha Vitaliy Bodnar in an interview with 44.ua in the fall of 2021.
On November 1, 2021, a powerful hacker attack was carried out on BTC-Alpha. It had been prepared for about six months. The attackers got inside the exchange, infected the computers of employees, and struck on D-Day.
“The attack had two goals,” explained Vitaliy Bondar. “The first was to ‘congratulate’ us on our birthday. I flew to Ukraine that day – my team and I have a tradition of celebrating our birthday together. The second goal was to stop our work on the day of the launch of the ‘first’ Ukrainian exchange Qmall , which is not the first at all. This is a project by Mykola Udyanskyi ( and Bohdan Prylepa – editor’s note), whom I believe to be the customer of the attack on us. Two years ago, I refused to cooperate with him (probably referring to Udyansky’s suspicious project Bitcoin Ultimatum – editor’s note). After that, I started receiving threats. There were many things, including threats of physical violence. I took it relatively seriously, but I didn’t know this person that well. Later, I realized that my life and health were really in danger.”
A few months later, after 02/24/2022, Vitaliy Bondar himself deliberately brought down his BTC-Alpha, which by that time had accelerated to $200 million in turnover per day. He blocked the accounts of all Russians - and this is about 60% of users, which colossally undermined his brainchild. And the aforementioned interview with accusations against Udyansky was erased from the Internet (we ourselves accidentally found it in the "Internet Archive" ). And it was clearly not Bondar who did this.
Ivan Chip, specially for the CRiME and [high-profile cases] projects
Распечатать