As previously reported by our colleagues from Payment Shield, Akopyan Arsen Borisovich is the main beneficiary of Payment.center. For many years, he was a favored figure at TKB Bank, where he maintained exclusive connections enabling him to service the traffic of illegal casinos.
Payment.Center is a fraudulent organization that processes black market traffic for online casinos banned in Russia, forex, and so-called “black” betting platforms. Here is just one of the sites with reviews about them, see here.
Reviews about fraudsters Paymemt.center
LinkedIn profile of Arsen Borisovich Akopyan shows that he continues to manage Payment.center.
Akopyan’s profile on LinkedIn
How is the seemingly “legitimate” company Payselection.com, led by CEO Garik Kravtsov, connected to Payment.center?
In fact, LLC PAYSELECTION (payselection.com) is a complete replica of the fraudulent organization Payment.Center, but it operates as a company with real clients, similar to CloudPayments. This is not surprising, given that former top managers of CloudPayments are involved in this Organized Criminal Group (OCG). The primary goal of PAYSELECTION is to integrate illegal payments for HighRisk traffic into legal payment channels.
Data of LLC PAYSELECTION in Audit-IT
The company is forming partnerships with Russian banks that remain unaware of its true intentions. They are also expanding into foreign markets, where they are establishing relationships with other banks through their financial companies.
A significant portion of Gazprombank’s shadow operations is conducted through them. The scheme functions as follows: Natalia Kudelyina, head of the acquiring sales department at GPB (previously worked with PAYSELECTION director Igor Kravtsov Sergeevich, also known as Garik Kravtsov (Facebook), general director of PAYSELECTION (see here) and his deputy Maxim Zhurav (his Facebook), managing director of the e-commerce division (also a former employee of CloudPayments, as indicated on his Facebook), under the management of Arsen Akopyan, have created a joint criminal enterprise.
Meanwhile, Garik Kravtsov gives an elaborate, albeit fabricated, interview on russian mass media RB.RU claiming that he has become toxic to others and decided to start his own business, but we all know that he created nothing; he merely became the CEO of a repackaged Payment.center and is merely a nominal director of Arsen Akopyan. It is easy to deduce that Garik = Arsen, simply by looking up Akopyan Arsen’s number in Getcontact, which we have already done for you using Arsen Borisovich’s phone number. Everything is evident.
GetContact app of Arsen Akopyan
Thus, LLC PAYSELECTION (payselection.com), which is a complete copy of Payment.center, becomes the sole entry point and client provider, creating a monopoly on servicing within Gazprombank. The bank denies “legitimate” clients, after which managers from Payselection approach them and offer informational and technical services. Its rates already incorporate the interests of all beneficiaries involved in the criminal activities.
The turnover of PAYSELECTION, bolstered by real merchants in GPB, allows for the addition of gray and black traffic from casinos and betting platforms to this revenue. The aim is to obscure the illegal turnover for the “legitimate” clients, ensuring that the Central Bank does not detect these transactions. They confidently engage with other categories of traffic, where significant kickbacks are also obtained.
The volumes of turnover are so substantial that, for diversification, traffic is now directed to Gazprombank’s subsidiary — Credit Ural Bank, also known as KUB, with turnover exceeding 1 billion rubles per month, while the actual turnover surpasses 5 billion rubles monthly (these are the limits for Akopyan Arsen and his OCG in just one MTS Bank).
When Garik first assumed the role of nominal director of PAYSELECTION, he never imagined that such money could be made from illegal payments, but by 2022 he was boasting about yard turnovers on his Facebook page.
One can only inquire of RB.RU how such blatant fraudsters, processing illegal payments for online casinos and betting platforms banned in Russia, disguised as a legitimate business, manage to appear in ratings of promising companies in Runet. Apparently, no one is aware of their real activities.
All the money earned by this OCG illegally from trusting citizens of Russia, amounting to several hundred million rubles per month, settles abroad, in unfriendly Great Britain, where Kravtsov Igor (also Garik) is also the nominal beneficiary of the same legal entity PAYSELECTION LTD, Company number 12689830, and is further converted into cryptocurrency, which we will discuss in the next article
