Image copyright cashbery Image caption The head of the Cashbery service believes that regulators and journalists are to blame for everything The investment service Cashbery, recognized by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation as a large-scale financial pyramid, has frozen the withdrawal of funds for three weeks, said the head of the platform, Artur Vardanyan. In his video message, he blamed the Central Bank and journalists for the current situation.
The head of the Cashbury investment service, Arthur Vardanyan, said that payments to depositors are frozen for three weeks. He believes that the platform was subjected to a targeted attack.
What is Cashbury?
Cashbury, according to Vardanyan, has been operating in Russia for almost two years. The Cashbury website reports that it is a platform that engages in P2P lending, that is, issuing loans to individuals and small businesses using investor funds.
“Cashbury is a place where investors can lend to borrowers through our specialized service,” the organization’s website says. The platform offers investors a return of 600% per annum.
Within two years, the service opened branches in major cities of Russia. At the end of September 2020, the Bank of Russia commented on the activities of Cashbury. “This is one of the largest financial pyramids that we have identified in recent years; it has launched its activities in many regions, almost throughout the country,” Valery Lyakh, director of the Central Bank’s department for combating unfair practices, said on September 26.
“Usually, the promise of ultra-high and at the same time guaranteed profitability is a sign of a classic financial pyramid,” the Central Bank noted in a press release.
“They build their activities on the principles of network marketing, promise inflated returns, and conduct aggressive advertising in the media and social networks,” said Lyakh. “Money is raised in both rubles and cryptocurrency, but there are no signs of real economic activity; companies that offer financial Cashbury have licenses from the Bank of Russia,” to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Bank of Russia reminded that the new article on organizing a financial pyramid provides for punishment of up to 6 years in prison. According to the Central Bank, several tens of thousands of Russians invested their money in Cashbury.
Experts comment on the Central Bank's statement about the financial pyramid at Cashbury
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On Wednesday, the Russian Central Bank announced the discovery of one of the largest financial pyramids in recent years. Valery Lyakh, director of the department for combating unfair practices of the Central Bank, spoke about the Cashbury group in this way. Vedomosti experts analyzed the activities of the group’s companies and suggested that if Cashbury is included in the pyramid register, investors are unlikely to be able to return the money.
According to the Central Bank, under the Cashbury brand there is a group of Russian and foreign companies operating almost throughout Russia. A representative of the regulator said that Cashbury's divisions were mainly engaged in network marketing, luring investors with inflated returns. Firms offering financial services do not have a Central Bank license. All this, coupled with aggressive advertising in the media, forced the Central Bank to suspect it of illegal actions and warn the public.
Valery Lyakh
Director of the Department for Combating Unfair Practices of the Central Bank
“The Bank of Russia handed over to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs information about a group of Russian and foreign companies operating under the single Cashbury brand. We believe it is necessary to warn citizens about the risks associated with investing money in this “project” in order to reduce their possible harm.”
Vedomosti expert, manager of the Federal Public Fund for the Protection of the Rights of Depositors and Shareholders Marat Safiulin, said that they learned about Cashbury at the end of 2020. At the beginning of this year, the group began to spontaneously raise funds. According to him, Cashbury held public events in regions where up to a thousand people came. At these meetings, investors were promised returns of 200–600% per annum thanks to a system of microloans at 2.2% per day.
Another expert of the publication noted that in the history of Russia there have been no cases when investors fully recovered the funds invested in the pyramid. Legal partner Dmitry Gorbunov noted that investors can only hope for a lucky break.
At the moment, the Central Bank cannot stop their activities because they do not have licenses from the Bank of Russia. Experts say that if the pyramid is officially recognized and included in the register, investors will have the opportunity to receive only partial compensation. Vedomosti quotes partner Irina Mostova, who explained that compensation to victims of financial pyramids is paid by the Federal Public Fund for the Protection of the Rights of Depositors and Shareholders. She added that even in this scenario, compensation will not exceed 25,000 rubles.
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Vedomosti called one of the phone numbers listed on the Cashbury website. The person who answered the phone said that the group's management would soon record a video in which they would explain what was happening.
The RIA Novosti agency, citing the representative of the Central Bank Valery Lyakh, reports that Cashbury managed to involve several tens of thousands of people in its “project”.
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Three week vacation
In recent days, a large number of messages have appeared on social networks that Cashbury does not allow withdrawal of funds. Several investors told the BBC they were expecting withdrawals within six days.
The head of Cashbury, Artur Vardanyan, published a video message on the evening of October 11, in which he stated that the withdrawal of investors’ funds was frozen for three weeks. He said that in the last two weeks “the news bacchanalia has continued.” “These actions led to uncontrolled processes,” Vardanyan said.
Vardanyan compared the situation around Cashbury with an information attack on the bank, as a result of which depositors decided to withdraw their funds, and the bank ran out of money. “In my memory, I don’t remember that even one bank was drowned like we were drowned,” Vardanyan said.
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“We are forced to go on a three-week holiday to restore blocked accounts and create a payment infrastructure in order to begin fulfilling financial obligations to investors. On November 1, we will launch the ability to withdraw funds from your personal account and will try to keep it working as before,” added the head of Cashbury.
3 billion damage
According to the Central Bank, Cashbury investors could lose about 1 billion rubles. Valery Lyakh said that the prosecutor’s office sent several applications to the courts to block sites belonging to the platform. Kommersant wrote that the amount of damage could amount to more than 3 billion rubles.
Lyakh noted that Cashbury investors have not yet filed claims for damages because the losses “have not yet been realized.”
“The organizers of Cashbury offered a year-long product, but the year has not yet passed. But a large number of people from almost all regions of the country filed complaints against the company, suspecting that it was an outright pyramid, said a representative of the Central Bank. — These are not the people who have already invested. These are the ones they were just trying to get involved.”
The company’s investors are actively discussing the situation in chats on Telegram and in the community on the social network VKontakte. From time to time, there are messages about delays in withdrawals and the sale of Cashbury internal currency at a deep discount. But basically, community members urge not to panic and to believe that everyone will be paid everything.
The platform has its own cryptocurrency - Cashbery Coin. On October 9, the exchange rate of this currency began to fall sharply and from a level of 1.8 dollars fell to 0.25 dollars as of 20:00 on October 11, that is, the collapse was 86%.
The end of Cashbury has arrived. Billions of stolen money ended up offshore
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The claim for recognition of prohibited information on two sites was submitted to the Pervomaisky District Court of Rostov-on-Don; it has not yet been scheduled for consideration, journalists were told in court. A representative of the press service of the prosecutor's office of the Rostov region told RIA Novosti that, on behalf of the Prosecutor General's Office, an inspection was carried out to determine whether there were signs of a financial pyramid in the activities of a group of Russian and foreign ones.
“As a result of the inspection, a lawsuit was filed with the court at the place of registration of the company to block the specified sites on the territory of the Russian Federation,” the interlocutor said, clarifying that we are talking about “cashbery.rf” and “www.cashbery.com”.
On September 26, 2020, the Central Bank announced the transfer of information about Cashbury to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the regulator, money is raised in both rubles and cryptocurrency, but there are no signs of real economic activity.
It is possible that not only the founders of the financial pyramid will be persecuted, but also the activists who lured new participants through social networks, receiving rewards for this.
The Central Bank reported that they build their activities on the principles of network marketing, promise inflated returns, and conduct aggressive advertising in the media and social networks. Companies that offer financial services do not have Bank of Russia licenses.
“This is one of the largest financial pyramids that we have identified in recent years; it has launched its activities in many regions, almost throughout the country. Moreover, recently it has been advertising itself more and more actively, trying to involve as many citizens as possible,” says Valery Lyakh, director of the department for combating unfair practices of the Central Bank.
A similar but smaller-scale scam, SmartCom, which promised citizens 1.5% per day, closed in the summer of 2020.
The legend that Cashbery invests in loans from MFOs/MCCs has not previously been confirmed by documents. Now the Central Bank is also talking about the lack of real activity.
In addition, MFO loans are associated with huge risks of non-repayment. Thus, the Home Money company (the largest microfinance organization in Russia), which attracted funds at an interest rate of only about 30% per annum, was unable to fulfill its obligations to lenders and bondholders, although it placed the raised money at a rate of 1-2% per day in microloans.
Formal owners of Cashbury:
Arthur Vardanyan, who jumps in front of the audience and, like a talking bird, beckons people to give him money, formally has nothing to do with the Cashbury financial pyramid. And the formal owner is a certain individual entrepreneur Roman Alekseevich Alekseev. We suspect that this character is just “The Pound That Must Sit.” He will sit. Almost all of the LLCs opened by Alekseev are in the process of liquidation.
Vardanyan himself conducts his campaigning in the style of other famous scammers - “Business Youth”, as well as the scammer boy Ayaz Shabutdinov.
Arthur Vardanyan “pushes bullshit”
One of the most famous reviews about the Cashbury scam is posted on Pikabu:
“A few months ago I wrote a post through which I wanted to find out what . Naturally, I was downvoted and most likely this one will be downvoted too, but oh well, that’s not what I’m talking about.
Some asked how my mother was doing. “did she raise the dough?” (With)
Honestly, I didn’t respond to these comments because... I didn't want to advertise this company. Because things were only getting better for mom every day. She flew several times a month to all kinds of meetings (and there are a lot of parties thrown there: cool hotels, Buzova and all that). Even now, she has been vacationing in Sochi for a month with the same “investors.” Mom even managed to become a 4th level manager (she wasn’t particularly interested in how much money needed to be invested and how many people to bring). In general, incomes grew.
Many are probably already aware of the situation; those who are not aware of it - the Central Bank declared Cashbury one of the largest financial pyramids in recent times and filed an application with the prosecutor's office (after two years of the company's existence, yeah). Therefore, I answer those who were interested, and those who were not interested - it will be useful to know)
My mother was lucky - she joined this company on time, so she earned money. BUT if she also brought them out, it would be absolutely wonderful. She simply reinvested almost all the interest that accrued to her, and she continues to do so now. In fact, she has a lot of money, but this money is virtual.
When I heard the news that the shop would soon be closed, I called my mother. I expected to hear at least some confusion, sadness and misery in her voice, to insert the signature “I told you so,” but everything happened differently. How simple is it HOW much does a person need to be brainwashed, that when everything is already obvious, she still believes that this is not a pyramid at all and in general this is just a PR stunt (which I still don’t understand about PR), cashbury has worked, works and will work! “Today I have already invested a thousand thousand, and someone else has invested two hundred thousand, and you should quickly go and invest all your thousand.”
I couldn’t even argue with her, it all came down to me investing money.
I'm waiting for this whole circus to stop. Maybe then my mother will return instead of this sectarian.
The thing that saddens me the most is that she pulled everyone around her into this pyramid. Not everyone gave away millions, of course, but still. The pyramid will collapse and everyone who loses money will not thank my mother.
Why am I even writing this? Talk to your loved ones. Tell us about this scheme, about MMM, about this ill-fated cashbury, about brainwashing, about the stupidity of people, etc. and so on. No one is immune, and getting people out of there is even more difficult than pulling them in. I, too, couldn’t even think before that this could affect my family. If anyone is interested, I’ll write a post after Cashbury is closed.
And I apologize for possible mistakes, as they say - the Chukchi is not a writer.”
Naturally, this woman’s mother and other people who invested money in Cashbury will not receive a penny. The scammers have already taken all their money offshore and are enjoying a luxurious life in hot countries.
This always happens to the owners of such pyramids - first they cut the cash, then lie low for several months or even years and eat away the collected money. When the money runs out, the scammers return “to the hunt” again, invest in new pyramids and breed new suckers. For example, our publication “Ustav.net” talked about the founder of the financial pyramid MMSIS Konstantin Kondakov , who collected tens of millions of dollars from citizens of Russia and Ukraine.
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Loginov Anton
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Russia. Moscow city
41 years old
Birthday: October 09, 1978
Comments: 3 Publications: 15834 Registration: 09/10/2018
