Until recently, a whole system of “gray” cross-border transfers operated in Russia, involving banks, popular fintech services, an army of betting platforms, and banned online casinos. Despite billion-dollar turnovers, this market managed to remain in the shadows for years. We will tell you about one of the main players in this business, RBK Money, and how they structured their illegal payment schemes, their connection to the previously mentioned Payment.Center and Arsen Akopyan, how they skyrocketed, and how they ended up in bankruptcy.
There are quite a few articles on the internet describing the beautiful rise of RBK Money in 2018-2019
lenta.ru - Recipe for Survival: How the History of the RBK.money Payment Service Affects the Brand
rb.ru - Co-owner of RBK.money Denis Burlakov: “Business is a team sport”
and already in 2021 their rapid fall and bankruptcy
rbc.ru - Operator of the RBK.money payment system surrendered its license to the Central Bank
compromat01.group - “RBK Money”: Liquidation to Avoid Bankruptcy?
rusbankrot.ru - A New Turn in the Bankruptcy of “RBK Money” Threatens Subsidiary Liability
rucompromat.eu - The Burlakov Brothers: Operation “Liquidation”
1info.net - Scammers Burlakovs with RBK Money Do Not Acknowledge Debts
We thoroughly investigated why the company RBK Money, led by Denis and Kirill Burlakov, fell from an astounding rise to bankruptcy and surrendering its license, and why the organized crime group formed within RBK Money is much larger than the previously mentioned Payment.Center.
The main key figures of this organized crime group, which processed over 230 billion illegal rubles, are in these photos, and as it turned out, they are not the Burlakov brothers at all.
Leaders of the Criminal Group RBK Money that laundered hundreds of billions of rubles for casinos - Burlakov Brothers, Korneev Alexey and Mannanov Ruslan
We carefully studied materials related to RBK Money, spoke with former employees of this organization and people working in the payment market, and obtained reliable information that the Criminal Group was created not by the Burlakov brothers, but by Korneev Alexey Vladimirovich and Mannanov Ruslan Rashitovich, who are the main organizers of the fraudulent schemes that allowed RBK Money to operate and launder billions of illegal rubles monthly until its bankruptcy, and currently, other organizations created by Mannanov and Korneev are still in operation.
In 2017, Korneev and Mannanov worked at Payture LLC (payture.com), where they came from QIWI, where they met. Payture is an electronic payment provider that processes completely legitimate transactions, among its clients are major services such as OKKO, Ostrovok.ru, Tele2, and other legitimate clients.
Korneev’s profile on Facebook and LinkedIn and Mannanov’s profile on Facebook and LinkedIn
The young guys wanted to make money. Mannanov repeatedly told the hungry and aggressive Korneev that they were not in the right business and that they wouldn’t get far with legitimate clients, having seen how actively Chronopay operated during Pasha Vrublevsky’s time and what multi-million dollar turnovers Chronopay was processing in dollars.
It was Mannanov who, after working 8 years at Chronopay (Chronopay), went from a regular accountant to an operational director and knew all the schemes for various types of activities and legitimate white schemes, but also how illegal payment processing schemes for various HighRisk types worked.
Mannanov absorbed all the experience from Chronopay and knew which schemes could earn big money. The only thing he never understood was that Pavel Vrublevsky was a payment genius, while our character Mannanov was just an ordinary “loser” with an accountant’s mentality. Therefore, Mannanov found the audacity and aggression in his friend Korneev, who, although an idiot, was ready for any crime, like a combination of necessity and opportunity.
No one had Pavel’s brains, and this duo eventually led to all the banks where our main characters “performed” losing their licenses and subsequently going bankrupt after some time.
Gradually, Korneev Alexey and Mannanov Ruslan began to attract similar HighRisk clients who were engaged in illegal businesses.
Why are they called HighRisk? Because these clients always generate a huge wave of chargebacks and inevitable fines from Visa, Mastercard, the Central Bank of Russia, and other regulators, up to the revocation of licenses, as clients often deceive their consumers. But the main feature of working with such clients is the huge commissions that these clients are willing to pay; for example, if a payment provider earns 0.3% processing online payments for Tele2 top-ups, by processing payments for accepting deposits for online casinos or child pornography, the payment provider earns 2-5% of the payment amount, i.e., 10 times more.
The owner of Payture, Andrey Goncharov, was not ready to work with such HighRisk clients because reputation is more valuable and it could lead to legal problems.
At the same time, in 2017, a company called RBK Money, managed by the Burlakov brothers Denis and Kirill, consisting of card processing and a pocket electronic money operator, non-bank credit organization (NCO) “EPS”, was unprofitable and practically no one used it.
And here, as they say, they found each other; the Burlakovs had the technical infrastructure and the pocket NCO EPS and wanted money, while Korneev and Mannanov knew all the HighRisk clients who wanted to find a payment provider and understood how to build fraudulent schemes, for example, through the replenishment of electronic money, which could be done under the license of NCO EPS.
Korneev and Mannanov understood one thing - they really wanted a lot of money, and they could only earn it from HighRisk clients, so they decided to quit Payture, luring some employees they had worked with since the days of Chronopay (for example, Lyudmila Yereemeeva) or simply trusted friends of Korneev (for example, Alexey Vaneev, Stanislav Potapov), their neighbors (for example, Igor Kogan - registered at 109117, Moscow, Volzhsky Boulevard, 13, apt. 251, Korneev - 109117, Moscow, Volzhsky Boulevard, 13, apt. 228-229) and other close colleagues.
Some of the main organizers of the fraudulent schemes of RBK Money under the leadership of Korneev and Mannanov - Korneev Alexey, Ereemeeva Lyudmila, Kogan Igor, Vaneev Alexey
In 2018, after moving to RBK Money with the Burlakov brothers, Mannanov Ruslan and Korneev Alexey immediately became stakeholders of the pocket NCO EPS, and their friends and colleagues became stakeholders of this NCO - technical founders in favor of Korneev and Mannanov (Yereemeeva Lyudmila, Kogan Igor, Vaneev Alexey, Popova Oksana), the remaining part - technical founders in favor of the Burlakovs:
The team of organizers of the fraudulent schemes of RBK Money under the leadership of Korneev and Mannanov in the person of Ereemeeva Lyudmila, Kogan Igor, Vaneev Alexey - stakeholders at NCO EPS
Since their employment in December 2017, RBK Money began to rapidly scale up illegal payments for online casinos, black and gray betting platforms, while simultaneously creating a “white and fluffy” brand, participating in all fintech conferences, and even performing on stage to be able to cover themselves with such a brand and present it as a successful business, thereby justifying the appearance of huge turnovers.
One of the schemes created by Korneev and Mannanov was wallet-based, which is well described in an article by the respected magazine THE BELL, as well as what the real beneficiaries of HighRisk clients are, against whom the Central Bank is actively fighting.
It was precisely for this that RBK Money needed NCO “EPS”
Wallet scheme actively used by NCO EPS for replenishing online casinos and for sports betting payments
The essence is that a Russian acquiring bank cannot process payments for online casinos, betting platforms, if they are not part of the TSUPIS system; forex brokers without a Central Bank license, in favor of binary options, including through electronic wallet companies. For all stated points of sale, the mcc code 7995 (gambling) must be established. According to the rules of the payment systems, an incorrectly set code is a serious violation and is punished with a fine of about $25,000 for each identified case (i.e., for a mirror site). In the summer of 2020, RFI Bank managed to receive fines of a million dollars from the Visa payment system due to such violations. If payments to online casinos are accepted through an electronic wallet, then the wallet itself must also have code 7995. And transactions under this code in our MIR system are simply completely closed, just like in all banks in the USA — card payments simply will not go through! By accepting such transactions through electronic wallets, banks pretend (until they get caught) not to notice that transactions are occurring in the wallet. Since compliance with the rules of payment systems is a requirement of law 161-FZ, a violation of this rule = violation of federal law
All clients of RBK Money - online casinos and betting platforms, of course, did not have mcc code 7995. This is explained by the fact that this mcc is issued to those who have an official license in Russia, officially work with a bank, and fall under numerous restrictions, including full identification of the payer.
How did RBK Money do this? They negotiated with large banks or barely alive banks that could act as acquiring banks, having their NCO — a non-banking credit organization, onto which all the regulatory pressure from the Central Bank was directed. Whoever’s license it is — that person is responsible to the Central Bank.
One of the partner banks of RBK Money turned out to be a “garbage” bank - Commercial Bank “VRB”, also known as “FINTECH”, which earned 2.87 billion rubles from illegal payments from RBK Money just in the first half of 2019. The volume of dubious operations of “Fintech” for 2018-2019 was estimated by the Central Bank at more than 200 billion rubles (this is mentioned in the report following the regulator’s inspection).
Of course, RBK Money, represented by Korneev Alexey, worked closely with his “colleague in the industry” Arsen Akopyan and his payment provider Payment.Center, and if clients coming to the partner acquiring bank, for example, Bank “Otkritie,” did not agree to work with the RBK Money service, they were immediately presented with the second payment provider, Payment.center, thus, Akopyan Arsen Borisovich and Korneev Alexey Vladimirovich were splitting HighRisk clients between themselves, which created a solid foundation for their further friendship and fraudulent partnership.
According to our data, only from 2018 to 2020, the volume of illegal operations of the Organized Crime Group represented by RBK Money amounted to over 450 billion rubles with a profit of more than 11 billion rubles, a large part of which settled in the pockets of the main beneficiaries – scammers - the Burlakov brothers, Korneev Alexey and Mannanov Ruslan.
As a result, the Burlakov brothers were stunned by such insane profits that fell upon them in 2018-2019 and went on to:
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become sponsors of Spartak, buying VIP boxes for years to come.
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Celebrate their 45th birthday, which took place in the concert hall “Mir” on Tsvetnoy Boulevard in October 2019.
As the portal “Finparty” wrote, the celebration was styled like a film festival with red carpets, golden lions, fake “movie divas,” and even a clapperboard saying “camera-roll.” The guests were also shown a movie titled “What the Burlakovs Talk About,” which was, of course, dedicated to the birthday boys. The festive atmosphere in the hall was created by artists from the “Quartet I” theater, the KVN team “Ural Dumplings,” singer IOWA, and “stars of the 70s-80s” – the Italian group “Ricchi e Poveri.”
Well, how could the real scammers who built all this - Korneev and Mannanov - remain in the background after such magnificence and prosperity of the owners of “RBK Money”? It was hard to accept, just as it was to share equally with the Burlakovs. Therefore, these guys decided simply to “throw” the Burlakovs and take all this business into their own hands.
During Covid in early 2020, when everyone switched to working online due to the pandemic, Korneev and Mannanov gradually withdrew all HighRisk clients and parked them at another NCO and bank, about which we will tell in our next publications.
They also took all the key employees of RBK Money who controlled the most important parts of the entire fraudulent scheme, thus, Igor Kogan, Alexey Vaneev, Lyudmila Ereemeeva, Yulia Kharkovskaya, Stanislav Popov, and others flowed into the new criminal structure of Korneev and Mannanov.
The particular cynicism of the situation is heightened by the fact that all the aforementioned employees created the illusion that they continued to work at RBK Money for a whole year, while in fact, they were already partially working for Korneev and Mannanov.
As it turned out, not such a team after all. On August 6, 2020, Korneev, Mannanov, and Dorofeev were already working as advisors to the owner of the “Fintech” bank, Murad Salikhov, and continued to deceive the Burlakovs
As a result, after Mannanov and Korneev decided to “throw” the Burlakov brothers, everything went downhill for the latter; they were left with nothing, all in debt, without turnover, facing sanctions from the Central Bank for illegal payments related to casinos and betting platforms. This led to the voluntary surrender of the NCO license, not waiting for the Central Bank to revoke it themselves.
Surrender of the NCO license by the Burlakov brothers
Surrender of the NCO license by the Burlakov brothers
Of course, the result was the subsequent bankruptcy of NCO EPS and the exit of Korneev and Mannanov, as well as their entire team of scammers from the list of founders.
NCO EPS in the process of bankruptcy
Thus, in just 2 years, RBK Money and all the subsidiary structures of the Burlakov brothers transformed from processing illegal HighRisk payments and implementing all the fraudulent schemes brought by Korneev Alexey and Mannanov, first into what seemed to be a thriving business, and then into a pumpkin, leaving the Burlakovs in debt as if in silks. And Korneev and Mannanov, having used the Burlakovs, moved on to continue their dealings with clients, turnovers, and their team.
