Former Rocket investor under fire over fraudster Timur Rokhlin’s alleged link to a pseudo-investment scheme worth tens of millions of euros

Dev.ua, an online outlet, was hit by a DDoS attack after an investigation into Rokhlin was published.

The online publication Dev.ua was subjected to a DDoS attack after publishing an investigation into Timur Rokhlin, an investor in the Rocket food delivery service, the outlet’s editor-in-chief Stanislav Yurasov reported on his Facebook page. At the time of publication, the website itself remained unavailable.

“Today, attackers are trying to take down the dev.by website as well. The attacks began on the same day when we published the investigation. It concerned Timur Rokhlin, an investor in the Rocket food delivery service. Ukrainian investigators arrested his assets in Ukraine following a request from the Bamberg Prosecutor’s Office (Germany), where his name was mentioned,” he wrote.

The Dev.ua article stated that German law enforcement agencies suspect Rokhlin of involvement in a major fraud scheme involving pseudo-investment platforms, with the damage estimated at tens of millions of euros, Delo reports.

Among other individuals suspected of involvement in the scheme are Ukrainian citizens Andrey Kurochkin, Yuriy Kopachevskiy, Igor Kozlenko, as well as Israeli citizens Michael Chebotar, Maksim Baranovskiy-Rafael, and Timur Rokhlin.

According to the publication, citing Ukrainian investigation data, €10.8 million in proceeds from fraudulent activities was transferred to a British company controlled by Rokhlin, and some assets linked by investigators to Rokhlin were seized at the end of 2020.

The investigation in Ukraine was launched following a request from the Bamberg Prosecutor’s Office. According to investigators, a group of Ukrainians and foreigners between 2017 and 2020 defrauded Europeans by offering them investments in various assets and promising a 100-fold or greater increase in their investments.

For this purpose, websites operating under the names Tradecapita, Fibonetix, NobelTrade, Forbslab, and Huludox were used. These structures offered trading in precious metals, currencies, cryptocurrencies, securities, and other assets.

According to law enforcement officials, when clients attempted to withdraw their money, they received calls from individuals claiming to represent the trading platforms, demanding payment of a service fee and a cash withdrawal commission amounting to 15% of the sum. However, after the payment was made, investors’ accounts were blocked and the money was taken by fraudsters.

The documented amount of damage caused by the scheme amounted to €9 million. The German newspaper Die Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that around 400 Europeans who became victims of the scheme contacted the police.

“Rokhlin’s lawyers are intimidating us, saying that criminal liability is provided for disclosing the details of the investigation. Although the entire text is based on data from public registers. It seems to me that they are simply trying to silence us,” Yurasov wrote.

Delo.ua contacted Rocket for comments regarding this situation, but has not received a response so far.

It should be noted that schemes involving the theft of funds from unsuspecting investors through suspicious websites are also widespread in Ukraine itself. The National Securities and Stock Market Commission even maintains a separate register of such online resources, periodically adding new websites to it.

Law enforcement agencies sometimes track down organizers of such activities. For example, in June, the Security Service of Ukraine shut down an underground telecommunications center in Kiev, whose organizers had stolen almost UAH 9 million from Ukrainian and foreign investors since the beginning of the year under the guise of attracting funds for international investment projects.

That same month, the Security Service of Ukraine reported blocking the activities of illegal call centers that posed as well-known brokerage companies and solicited money from citizens of EU and CIS countries.

In March, the Security Service of Ukraine also reported the disruption of an organized group in Kiev that appropriated funds from Ukrainians by simulating participation in stock trading and cryptocurrency operations.

skelet.info