SEXOGRAM: Who is the owner of the most popular platform for finding sex workers?

On the night of January 14, the administrators of Telegram removed the channel grid of one of the biggest escort projects in Russia, Ashoo. By that time, it had been around for over two years and had roughly 500,000 subscribers. The moderators also got rid of all articles on Telegra.ph that featured reviews of Russian brothels and massage parlors from Ashoo agents, and the telegram bot of the sex worker search project faced sanctions. Well-known Telegram channels with a large audience, such as Ax Live, Dvach and Ateo Breaking, promptly supported the grid. Within a day, all Ashoo communities were restored.

The specific reasons for the sudden disappearance and reappearance of the sex network are unknown even to its owner, who was identified by “Base”. It turned out to be a former athlete from St. Petersburg, now a successful expat businessman who hid his identity for years.

To learn more about who launched the all-Russian platform for sex services on Telegram, how much money he makes per day, and why Roskomnadzor overlooks his sex business, read our new investigation.

Before exiting the Intimcity market, Ashoo’s audience was approximately 750,000 people each month; in December, their number increased to 1 million. 70% of the portal’s visitors are men between 25 and 34 years old. According to Google Trends, over the past three months, Ashoo has achieved “superpopularity,” signaling a traffic increase of 5,000%.

The departure of “Intimity” impacted interest in Ashoo, according to search query statistics. For instance, in July 2021, Ashoo was searched on Yandex by an average of 3,500 people per month. In January 2023, it was 60,000 people. The explosive growth in queries for the word “ashoo” occurred particularly in November-December 2022: from 19 to 60,000 queries per month.

Blocked, blocked, but never banned

Roskomnadzor has repeatedly blocked the Ashoo website, but this has not affected the functionality of the escort services search engine. Moreover, at the time of the ban, the aggregator's traffic does not decrease at all. Ashoo’s secret is simple and lies in subdomains, which for some reason are ignored by the RKN and are not subjected to bans, along with the telegram bot of the project not being afraid of being blocked.

“Blocks from RKN are a common occurrence that does not slow down the operation of our resources at all, and our team handles the transition to a new subdomain in five to seven minutes,” stated the Ashoo team in response to yet another block on November 11th.

When Ashoo.com was blocked by the RKN, the aggregator's administration moved its site to the .nl domain and put a placeholder with instructions to bypass the blocking and redirect users to a working subdomain. It's worth noting that the RKN can block access by closing all subdomains at once, including future ones, but they didn't ban the “ashoo.nl” domain itself for Ashoo.

The challenges with blocking are not only related to the RKN; they also involve how the prosecutor’s office files a claim. To shut down the “marketplace of prostitution”, the prosecutor’s office only needs to file a lawsuit demanding that access to the Ashoo website and its subdomains be restricted and that it be excluded from search engines. However, the prosecutor’s office requirements are unclear, and after the site is blocked, it simply moves to another subdomain.

“Baza” sent a request to the RKN, but they had not received a response as of the time of publication.

With affection, Suter

In the primary Ashoo telegram channel, there's only one mention of its founder. It's a post about how all Ashoo projects in Telegram have gathered an audience of 500 thousand subscribers. At the end of the post, it says “Love, Suter (Founder of Ashoo).” Another hint is in the “Information” section in the BZ channel: “On important issues – @suter.”

Suter manages the telegram channel “Suter broadcasts”, where he discusses prostitution and talks about his past involvement in pimping. He doesn't share personal photos, but there are some details that provide a general idea about the author. From Suter’s posts, we know his age – 31 years old, marital status – married – and current place of residence – Argentina.

Pimp of his time

Sinenko refers to Telegram as an ideal platform for finding clients in the intimate sphere. There are several reasons for this. RKN doesn't block Telegram, unlike directory sites; prostitutes can sell erotic content, and the client doesn't have to exchange a number to call a prostitute – they can call directly in the application.

Sinenko doesn't reveal his income from maintaining telegram channels, but he has somehow admitted that most of the money earned is reinvested in projects. For instance, he spends 300–400 thousand rubles each month on the development of BZ, BZ Indie, and a couple of his channels. In the case of Ashoo, 95% of the money earned goes to advertising, as confirmed by Suter in a conversation with Base, but the site has many other expenses besides it.

“It appears that most of the money is spent on advertising, but the development of new projects is also quite expensive. Additionally, Ashoo.nl’s expenses include infrastructure, tests (pentests and stress tests),” Suter explained to Baze. Pentests and stress tests that Suter mentioned evaluate the site's resilience to hackers and increased influx of users.

The primary income of Sinenko comes from girls who post their profiles on the website and in the telegram channel. Placing a regular questionnaire for Muscovites on Ashoo costs 216 rubles, for workers from St. Petersburg – 172 rubles. Elite prostitutes from Moscow pay 432 rubles, from St. Petersburg – 345. Placement of any profiles for girls from other cities of Russia is free. To be on the main page of the site, one has to pay 40 thousand rubles for a banner. On average, about 1800 profiles are online per day on the site.

Thus, according to the most conservative estimates of “Base”, the Ashoo aggregator earns from 500 thousand rubles a day – that is, about 15 million rubles a month. Suter disagrees with this calculation. He sent the “Base” fresh statistics on the replenishment of the “wallet” Ashoo. For example, on February 5, the site earned about 390 thousand rubles. “The net profit of Ashu, given the huge expenditure side, is much less than 5 million rubles,” commented Suter.

Despite the high revenue, according to the owner of Ashoo, the project allegedly only recently began to make a profit: “Before that, they worked in the red. It took a year to pay back. But now, given our new developments, we are in a small minus, though this is a small amount. Suter added that Ashoo is far from being his only source of income. He invests in securities, cryptocurrency, telegram channels and in the production of computer games.

NOT “Onlifance” alone