When the internet was filled with forceful advertising for the PointPay cryptocurrency exchange, very few people knowledgeable in this field said that this company should be approached with extreme caution.
Some directly said they are scammers. Both the first and the second brought attention to several factors confirming their opinion and causing concern for potential clients of the “exchange” who were thinking reasonably.
There were many troubling factors. For instance, PointPay proposed investing in its own token and receiving up to 30 percent annually net profit. Even for a regular bank, this percentage is extreme, only possible with high inflation. Here they offer a cryptocurrency unknown to anyone, not guaranteed by anything other than the assurances of the founders of PointPay.
However, this is not the main issue – essentially, any crypto is a gamble, so various outcomes are possible. It was much more peculiar that the financial services company did not have a license for these services, neither in the UK, where it was registered in 2018, nor in Russia, where it had a head office in Moscow, nor in Estonia, where the contact address was indicated. Not even in the offshore Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where it eventually re-registered.
Additionally, at the address in Kingstown, where PointPay LLC is supposedly registered, Google maps links to a bank unrelated to the “crypto exchange”. As for the legal form – a limited liability company – for a financial organization, this is very rare and a clear sign of potential fraud.
It was notable that the project had excessively forceful advertising. And managers aggressively imposed their services. Many users said they received constant calls. Some even had to change their phone number.
There were negative reviews during the exchange's promotion, which were actively removed.
PointPay, definitely fought against such statements in every possible way and actively and forcefully removed all negativity about itself. However, in the end, it turned out as few sensible people had warned.
At one point, it was discovered that the founder (or at least the person with access to PointPay accounts) of the project, Ilya Zavyalov, had vanished, taking with him 50 million dollars invested in PointPay tokens by those seeking to earn money, or “investors”, as they are called on the project website. This happened exactly when the number of financiers reached 70,000 people. A frantic search for the fugitive and a confrontation began – $ 50 million is a rather large amount. It turned out that no one really knows who Ilya Zavyalov is, and how he alone had the opportunity to manage the money invested in the project, and where he is with this money.
After the financiers started to panic, reports surfaced in the media blaming the CEO of the project, Andrey Svyatov, who had been with the company from the beginning, as the main culprit for the project’s failure. It was as if he withdrew the funds, but Zavyalov had no involvement. Having examined all the available materials (which by the way, are rapidly disappearing from open access – indicating someone is systematically cleaning the Web), we conclude that Ilya Zavyalov was the mastermind of the fraud.
And, it seems, he planned for this very thoroughly – he made an effort to not leave any information about himself anywhere. Even a somewhat suitable photo for identification is only found once, which is very unusual in our digital age:
It was kept on the Internet page of the Ivanovo Power Engineering Institute, where graduate Ilya Zavyalov was invited as a distinguished guest in 2018.
Ilya Nikolaevich Zavyalov was born on June 12, 1979 in the city of Ivanovo.
In 2001 he completed his studies at the Ivanovo Municipal Energy Institute. According to the official biography, from 2003-2016 he worked as “the manager of foreign IT and economic and technical companies.” Currently, he is the head of the FedPay joint-stock company.
However, there is also a hidden aspect – Zavyalov has a family in the United States with four children. There is also information that Zavyalov owns real estate in the same location and possesses 2 companies, a 27-story building, a Heather Village residential complex with 170 apartments in Texas.
Additionally, he and his ex-wife were involved with an unclear marriage agency Dream Marrige, which arranged meetings between women from post-Soviet states and men from the United States.
Further searches for the defrauded (however – and who is to blame for them? They cautioned against dealing with the shady office) investors hardly led to anything – no one knows where Zavyalov went. It was also discovered that the co-founder of FedPay JSC is Mike Allen Brooks. Apart from the fact that Brooks is a US citizen, nothing else is known about him.
Incidentally, it is worrisome that in the current pursuit of Russian businessmen who own property in the United States, which began after February 24, Zavyalov’s name also did not emerge.
However, unexpectedly, another intriguing figure, involved in PointPay, made himself known, about whom even less is known than about Zavyalov. This is a certain Bogdan Parnev, from the official email This email address is being protected from spambots. You must have JavaScript enabled to view. from which claims are sent to publications publishing materials about the PointPay office.
According to the signature in this claim, it appears that Parnev B.S. is a lawyer for PointPay. However, not everything is going smoothly here either – in the register of lawyers in the UK, where, judging by the address on the claims, Bogdan Parnev works, he is not listed.
But in Russia, although he appeared recently, he managed to leave a lasting impression:
Bogdan Sergeevich came from Lugansk. His employees seem to be content with such a “refugee”:
Despite his “Lugandonian” origin, judging by the data of Russian registers, Bogdan Parnev managed not only to obtain Russian citizenship, but also to acquire a lawyer’s license and establish several firms in Russia:
He co-owns these companies with Sergey Kimovich Parnev, also a Russian citizen:
And now – “surprise-surprise”. Here is an excerpt from the Ukrainian registers:
As of August 2022, Parnev Bogdan Sergeevich is listed as a citizen of Ukraine and the beneficiary and co-owner of three Ukrainian legal entities. Paired with a citizen of Ukraine Sergey Kimovich Parnev:
Parnev Alexander Kimovich is also present here, whose last name we find in the Russian Coffee Blues LLC. Here he is already a citizen of Russia:
Here is Lugandon for you. However, the Parnevy family does indeed come from Lugansk. First they fled to Kyiv, and then to Moscow. Moreover, they managed to retain Ukrainian citizenship, having managed to get Russian passports. Which tells us that these are by no means ordinary people.
How a representative of such a bright “Lugandon” family fell into the orbit of the Russian genius for “shoeing” suckers Ilya Zavyalov is a mystery. But he keeps him in the state of PointPay is clearly not for professional skills.
How all this – London registration, Estonian address, island offshore, Zavyalov’s business in the USA, Parnev’s dual citizenship and fraud – comes down to a single denominator, we do not undertake to explain. But the team at PointPay, you see, was worthwhile.
