Match systems-Garantex: power crypto mafia
How exchange client accounts are cleaned.
Investigation into the activities of retired employees of the FSB of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation of the Match Systems company, also known as the Plain network. They specialize in stealing huge amounts of cryptocurrency from clients of the largest exchanges with the help of fake decisions of Russian courts and corrupt law enforcement officers. With the help of a fake decision of the Moscow City Court, swindlers from Match systems (Plain chain) blocked a businessman’s account in the Garantex exchange of 400 thousand dollars and tried to steal this money. Then the representatives of the victim received an official document that the court decision was a fake. But they did not have time to return the funds. We continue the story of the victim’s representative:
“At the beginning of February 2023, the seized funds still remained on the account. They disappeared in the middle. That is, for some reason the exchange wrote off the balances; this happened around the same days when we received confirmation from the court about the fake. Then we notified representatives of the Security Exchange and asked for a meeting. At the end of February the meeting took place.
At a meeting with representatives of the Security Service of the Garantex exchange, we spoke with the person who is responsible for processing requests from law enforcement agencies. And then we are not weak so p.... It turned out that the exchange fulfills everything, there is no procedure for checking decisions. Not bad for an exchange with billions of dollars in turnover, isn’t it?
I want to take a break here. In the recent past, I myself was an employee of SB Bank and one of my responsibilities was to check all kinds of incoming requests and decisions from law enforcement agencies and the court. I checked them for accuracy in various ways. In this case, it is enough to check the decisions through the websites of the Moscow courts, which the Security Council of the entire exchange did not know about.
Moreover, this is not the most important point that the exchange does not check the authenticity of the papers, referring only to the fact that emails are sent to them from the domain name @mvd.ru, and the original papers are brought by employees upon presentation of their official ID. Here we will not go into such details that you can see photoshop in the court ruling on a good display; these are, let’s say, specific skills. But what any competent lawyer can understand is that the investigator’s resolution “to lift the arrest and transfer funds from Petya to Vasya” is clearly illegal and cannot be executed, because deprivation of property rights is possible only by court decision or in individual cases stipulated by law. However, it was executed, and our client lost about 25 million rubles at the exchange rate at that time. And after this, a meeting took place in the Security Council of the exchange.
At the meeting, Security Council Garantex employees were shown the original certificate from the court stating that the court ruling was false. They explained that, in their words, the deposit was written off by order of investigator Shakina and transferred to the account of the alleged victim, who, let me remind you, is represented by Match Systems. However, allegedly, the exchange at the last moment did not allow these funds to be withdrawn and is keeping them. We have a logical question - if the resolution is false and you know it, could you return this money to its rightful owner?
And this is where the refined cringe came in. No clear answer was given, since the employee with whom we spoke had to confer with the head of the exchange security system. A week later, the Security Service employees made it clear that no refund should be expected, and after that they stopped communicating altogether. This, by the way, is a characteristic feature of this exchange - all communication on work issues from the outside, in particular from lawyers, is practically impossible without personal acquaintances and good relationships.
The exchange then chose an excellent position, which it still stands on today:
1. yes, we understand that we executed an illegal decree and took your money from you;
2. no, we will not return the client’s money until you bring us a court or investigator’s order, which specifically states that we return your deposit to you.
Garantex, Match Systems and document forgery. A series of bedtime stories. Part 5.
What we got:
1. The exchange wrote off the client’s funds according to the drawn decisions of the court and the investigator, which were directly contrary to the law, without conducting proper verification of them;
2. The Exchange admitted the fact that the decisions were fraudulent;
3. The exchange flatly refused to return the deposit to the user until it was ordered to do so by a real court decision.
The position of the exchange is striking in its inconsistency. First, they execute the illegal decision, but to restore the rights of their client, they demand a legal one. It’s like the bailiffs will evict you from your apartment based on a drawn writ of execution, and when you bring them a certificate from the court that such a writ of execution never existed, they will say: “We agree. But we won’t let you go home anymore. Bring a court decision that will oblige us to let you back in.” Only if in the case of bailiffs you can appeal their illegal actions in the same court, then in the case of Garantex you can do so This is impossible: Garantex does not have a legal entity in Russia, their Estonian legal entity was liquidated long ago, all of their activities are not regulated by anyone or anything.
Just think, your deposit on Garantex can be written off tomorrow at any time using drawn pieces of paper. And even if you prove three times that they are fake, you will no longer see your money. Introduced? And this is reality. The big question is whether it is worth keeping large deposits there. But, of course, you decide for yourself. We simply tell stories that cannot be kept silent about.
Oh yes, and about the investigation of the Investigative Committee. During the work, more than 5 similar episodes were identified. In another case, our lawyers also represent the interests of the victim - there a person lost 900,000 rubles using the same pieces of paper, and the stock exchange just doesn’t want to hear about him, they are even afraid to meet with lawyers. Moreover, in the case of these 900,000 rubles, the money completely left the exchange, although the investigation was also opened only as an attempted theft. And in the main episode that we are talking about, the investigator directly refuses to confiscate from the exchange and arrest within the framework of a real criminal case the subject of the crime - our cryptocurrency, stolen by scammers. Although this is his direct responsibility. But relations with him are purely procedural issues and will be resolved by us in the manner prescribed by law. These are the realities of our criminal cases. Let’s fight on.
And yes, we do not publish names, surnames, exact dates, amounts, etc. here, since the investigation is underway. However, everything stated above is documented.
The story was published with one message: be careful when working with Match Systems and when working with the Garantex cryptocurrency exchange. Using history as an example, we see that there are a huge number of questions for both of them, and when working with them there is a huge risk of losing large deposits due to murky checks, investigations, arrests, and so on. Draw your own conclusions."
Мария Соколовская