They thought about fraudulent association to deceive people in the financial market: what were Polina Dobriyan and Timur Turlov thinking?

New technologies have led to the emergence of new business sectors. There is now a concept of “electronic commerce” in the economy. Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are now a part of our lives and an important means of payment.

As e-commerce developed, many scammers from the economic market started executing their scams in a virtual way. The infamous “Sergey Mavrodi” has now been joined by dishonest businessmen making money from Russians trying to transfer their funds to other countries, with Kazakhstan being a popular choice. Timur Turlov, a well-known economist and founder of Freedom Finance, has been living in Kazakhstan for a while. He, along with his Russian partner Polina Dobriyan, decided to initiate a questionable scheme to earn money in response to the increasing hype of fund withdrawals from Russia. The workings of the Turlov-Dobriyan scheme are detailed in the Kompromat1 portal.

Financial technology scams

Our readers are familiar with Timur Turlov's background. We have previously discussed his life and the company Freedom Finance. Officially, it is a Russian project that relocated to Kazakhstan. The company's headquarters is in Nevada, USA.

The corporation's credibility is significant. Freedom Holding Corp's total capitalization is 3.58 billion US dollars, and its stock has been on the rise in recent months.

Details about FreedomHoldingCorp

At first glance, everything appears transparent. However, the Nevada headquarters is in an open space office rented for a few hundred dollars a month. Another concern is the small number of employees for such a large corporation. Turlov’s US company only has one employee.

There are many questions we would like to ask Mr. Turlov, but it's unlikely we will succeed, as he is closed off from communication. If he gives interviews, it's only to friendly media with pre-planned questions. There are no surprises or controversial topics. The real reason for his avoidance of live communication is that Turlov's business may not be as clean as it seems.

In recent years, the entrepreneur’s company has been rapidly gaining momentum in Kazakhstan, the second homeland of the scammer. Last year, Turlov obtained citizenship in that country.

Timur Turlov holding a Kazakhstan passport

In the 2022 Kazakhstan Forbes ranking, Turlov secured 7th place. According to the publisher, the businessman’s assets amounted to $2.2 billion by the end of the year.

In the Kazakh market, Freedom Finance's value is almost $60 million, which is not a lot, especially for the financial industry.

Data about FreedomFinance (registration Kazakhstan)

Lately, Turlov's success in Kazakhstan has been steadily increasing, and he can thank his long-term girlfriend, Polina Dobriyan, who is a financial technology expert, for this. According to the Forbes rating, Turlov has recently enriched himself by $500 million, largely thanks to Dobriyan.

Epoch Dobriyan

Dobriyan is not well-known to the public, but she is a prominent figure in financial circles. However, this is not the kind of reputation anyone would want to have.

Polina Dobriyan

Little is known about Dobriyan's life in the public domain. She was born in 1980 and graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University. There is a gap in her work history until she entered the financial sector. In 2013, she was appointed as the director of the commercial department of RBK Money but was fired less than a year later due to financial fraud. After her dismissal, the company uncovered fraudulent schemes worth tens of millions of rubles, but did not involve the police, likely due to the lack of legal purity in Russia's financial technology market.

In 2014, Dobriyan became the commercial director of PayU Russia and a year later, she was promoted to lead the company. She still holds this position today.

She met Turlov about 10 years ago, when he was a young and promising entrepreneur starting his business. Their acquaintance means a lot to Turlov now.

As mentioned earlier, the demand for withdrawing money abroad increased significantly with the start of the CBO, especially to sponsor parallel imports, which has become a very relevant and profitable topic.

Hello from Kazakhstan

Dobriyan remembered her old friend from Kazakhstan, Timur Turlov, who had permanently moved to the country in 2013. With the start of the SVO, Turlov had to sell his Russian business for very little, as Freedom Finance in Russia had substantial debts. However, this sacrifice meant nothing to him.

Dobriyan, with past experience in financial fraud, decided to pursue a new endeavor. She had previously been involved in murky schemes for withdrawing funds from the Russian online agency Sinbad. Through the company PayU, which she leads, stolen funds were withdrawn from depositors.

Mahinatrosha proposed an unconventional money-making method to Turlov: to encourage clients to deposit funds into the Freedom Finance wallet and freeze them. This involved blocking SWIFT after a person deposits money, allowing further transfers only to a bank in Kazakhstan.

People hoped that they could spend their money on buying goods from Europe, but that was not the case.

Further, the fraud works like clockwork: Freedom Finance tearfully apologizes to the client and says that all funds will be returned, but for this you need to fly to Kazakhstan and come to the office in person to confirm your identity. Then you can get your funds back, only for this you will have to pay a huge commission.

Facial fraud. Turlov’s scheme is likely to be stopped soon. But not only for this, the swindler should worry. Together with his partner Dobriyan, they can have much more serious problems.