We conducted an in-depth investigation into the business structure of Arsen Borisovich Akopyan and all his companies, including Payment.center, Payselection.com (which we reported on earlier), and many other affiliated entities, revealing a complex network of companies.
Let’s examine how Arsen Borisovich has constructed a payment scheme for illegal children’s casinos, online casinos, sports betting, and “black betting platforms” that are prohibited in the Russian Federation.
Arsen Borisovich Akopyan and his journey:
Timeline of the fraudster Akopyan’s workplaces
As can be seen, Arsen Borisovich has been involved in payments for quite some time and has deeply integrated himself into the fintech business landscape in Russia, albeit from its most dubious side, having worked in the notorious bankrupt company RBK Money, Cardpay (now Unlimint / Unlimit), and subsequently at Payment.center.
Key individuals in the Organized Criminal Group he established, is Arsen Borisovich Akopyan (Payment.center), Igor Sergeevich Kravtsov (payselection.com), Vasily Yuryevich Melikhov (Defexa.io), Nikolai Zhukovich (FIN CENTER LIMITED), Evgeny Gerasimov, the main sales representative and frontman for some of the companies, along with several other nominal founders.
Since the primary payers for illegal online casinos, sports betting, forex, and other illegal businesses are ordinary residents of the Russian Federation, and money needs to be withdrawn for casinos and betting platforms abroad, the structure of Arsen Akopyan’s companies is quite intricate, which we will detail below.
Companies registered in the Russian Federation serve multiple functions:
- LLC PAYSELECTION, for mixing shadow Russian traffic from HighRisk payments for online casinos into legitimate traffic through Gazprombank or MTS Bank, with a net revenue exceeding 70 million rubles, experiencing a growth of 27 times in 2023, a remarkable increase for 5 people in the company, which certainly raises suspicions. Thus, an official image and an appealing narrative in the form of the alleged founder Garik Kravtsov are necessary.
Revenue growth of the HighRisk company PAYSELECTION by 27 times
Given that this revenue corresponds to the net processing fee, which in the HighRisk market averages 0.5-1% of payments made via card methods, excluding cryptocurrency payments (which we will discuss later), this translates to an annual turnover of 7-10 billion rubles ONLY from cards, but as it turns out, the actual turnovers are significantly higher.
- LLC Korpus-IT - the second company, whose ultimate beneficiary is Arsen Akopyan.
Korpus-IT - Arsen Akopyan’s company
This is where all employees working in Russia for Arsen Akopyan’s structures are located, both within Russia and abroad, as most of the staff reside in Russia. The OKVED of Korpus-IT is Software Development (code according to OKVED 62.01), as this is the simplest way to obscure the inflow of funds to the company’s account from unknown sources, likely coming from software development services that cannot be verified, without any goods or reporting.
List of Arsen Akopyan’s foreign companies for withdrawing money from Russia abroad:
Hong Kong:
- ECOM CENTER Limited, another company registered in Hong Kong (a preferred jurisdiction for scammers and payment services involved in HighRisk ventures and casinos, as there are no reporting requirements). It facilitates the withdrawal of money from Russian banks to offshore accounts of casino and betting platform owners, and all equipment - servers and more, as well as a payment license allowing agreements with Russian banks involved in HighRisk and payment services without establishing a bank account.
United Kingdom:
- PAYSELECTION LTD, registered in the United Kingdom (link here) to facilitate the transfer of money to Europe from Russia, processing clients located in Cyprus and distributing funds among merchants. As we can see, the beneficiary there is also Igor Kravtsov, but as we know, Garik = Arsen 😀.
- ETA MONEY LIMITED, Company number 11061003, beneficiary is Jew Nikita Olgart, Akopyan’s lawyer (link here), among the directors is a current employee of Payment.Center - Stanislav Ioffe (Stanislav Ioffe - his LinkedIn - Payment.Center employer), this same Ioffe is also an employee of ETA MONEY LIMITED - link here, at the bottom of the list.
- FIN CENTER LIMITED, Company number 11915870, beneficiary is Belarusian Mikalai Zhukovich, affiliated with Arsen Akopyan (link here)
FIN CENTER LIMITED - nominal beneficiary Nikolai Zhukovich, Akopyan’s partner
This same Nikolai Viktorovich Zhukovich is also a co-founder of the liquidated LLC “Maniaps” alongside Arsen Borisovich Akopyan and Vasily Yuryevich Melikhov.
LLC MANIAPS - Zhukovich, Akopyan’s partner and co-founder
Canada:
- FPS GLOBAL LTD, search by name via this link, registered as MSB (Money Services Business), Legal Name: FPS GLOBAL LTD., Operating Name: DEFEXA, website - https://defexa.io, activity - Foreign Exchange, Money Transferring, Virtual Currency. The primary company for withdrawing money from Russia in the form of cryptocurrency. The main funds, amounting to hundreds of millions of rubles per month, settle there under the guise of the cryptocurrency service Defexa.io.
Defexa cryptocurrency exchange
Employees of Payment.Center also work in Defexa, such as Diana Maniapova (of course, all of them are from a similar HighRisk provider Cloudpayments under the leadership of Garik Kravtsov):
Defexa.io - as can be seen on the website, this is a cryptocurrency exchange that allows for the anonymous withdrawal and exchange of money, thereby concealing the sources of income and converting money from Russia into cryptocurrency, effectively disappearing without a trace. Of course, this is merely a façade under the guise of a legitimate cryptocurrency business for the substantial turnovers generated from the Russian Federation.
Why online casinos and black betting platforms have begun transitioning to cryptocurrency will be discussed in our upcoming publications.
Thus, the structure of companies created by Arsen Akopyan processes payments from trusting citizens of Russia for approximately 10 billion rubles per month (the limits of Arsen Borisovich’s companies are only in one MTS Bank - 5 billion rubles).
This money flows through his companies in the Russian Federation, such as Payselection, and ultimately transforms into cryptocurrency through his Canadian FPS GLOBAL LTD (also known as Defexa) or through Hong Kong under a payment license, eventually ending up in the pockets of casino owners.
