Old schemes of new scammers: the Pro100business pyramid scheme (AirBitClub). Where to go if you are a victim of online scams

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"I am a student, I have already earned several million"

How the all-Russian bitcoin pyramid, organized by young Urals residents, works

Beautiful life, expensive cars and vacations in the Maldives are the attributes with which members of the "bitcoin business" community attract new members. The pyramid will exist as long as new contributions are made VKontakte page of Artem Y.

In Russia, a network of supporters of the Pro100business community is actively growing, which is organized according to the principles of the classical financial pyramid. Its organizers use modern methods: they are looking for new participants in social networks, and contributions are transferred to bitcoins. But, in fact, Pro100business is not much different from companies like MMM that operated in the 90s. And even commercials about a beautiful life, which are filmed to attract new followers, resemble an advertisement in which Lenya Golubkov gave his wife new boots. Only now, in the stories, young millionaires from Pro100business present luxury foreign cars to their wives and girlfriends and relax in the Maldives.

A young man in a black hat with his palms closes the eyes of a girl in a transparent blouse and tight-fitting leather trousers and takes her to a car dealership. Under the voiceover text: “At first, dreams seem impossible, and then - real”, the man gives up. The girl opens her mouth wide in delight, throws herself on the neck of her companion, and then happily runs to the car, covered with a scarlet cloth with a large bow on the hood. Her blonde curls flutter. Under the fabric is a red Mazda CX-5 crossover, the price of which reaches 1.7 million rubles. At the end of the plot, the couple gets into the car, everyone is happy and smiling.

The man on the screen is a 33-year-old resident of Yekaterinburg Kolya K., and his companion is his wife Elina. The video was published on Nikolai's page on the VKontakte social network with the words: “I gave my beloved new car from the salon in the maximum configuration. Just like that, for no reason. " Nikolay K. is the host of weddings in the Ural capital. In addition, he is the owner of a hookah club in Yekaterinburg. But, judging by his page, a completely different occupation brings him the main income.

Kolya K.'s feed is full of reposts. There are videos where other young couples in another city buy themselves Mercedes or Porsche. And in this account there are many photos of friends taken in different parts of the earth, or re-posts about the millions of rubles earned. Many people thank their "teacher". Kolya writes that he “created 35 ruble millionaires” in a year. He is a managing partner and one of the speakers for a community called Pro100business.

Here is another video, which was filmed in May 2013 by Yekaterinburg resident Artem Yu in one of the parks in Yekaterinburg, where he was walking with a stroller. Artem Yu secretly shares with his viewers: for five years he studied psychology at the Ural State Pedagogical University, but only a year ago, having entered the network business, he really began to understand psychology. “This [network business] is real reality. Either we involve, or we are involved, ”says the man. He admitted that he used to be very modest and stuttered, but now everything has changed. “There is just a lot of money in the network business,” is another argument that he confidentially communicates to his viewers. It can be seen that Artyom is a little worried - he continually touches the ring on his ring finger.

Five years later, in January of this year, the same person, but already self-confident, conducts a Pro100business seminar in Perm and easily conducts the assembled audience. The hall is overcrowded, some are standing, as there were not enough seats. "What is our team called?" - asks Artyom, and on his go-ahead two hundred gathered people chant three times in chorus: “Just business!”, Throwing up their hands with clenched fists.

Artem Y. is one of the top leaders of Pro100business in Yekaterinburg and, like Nikolai, is the ideologist of AirBitClub. On December 21, 2017, on his VKontakte page, Artem Y. wrote: "This is my very first million bucks, earned over 11 months in the network business of Airbitclub." In the videos “about the beautiful life of Pro100business participants”, he often appears in his Porsche Panamera in eggplant color. The cost of the car is more than 10 million rubles. One of these "spectacular appearances" occurs with the song "Raise the Bubble". New Year Artem Y. spent with his family in the Maldives. Artem is fond of esotericism and compares his participation in Pro100business with a flight into space. “Tyoma, you are creating an epidemic of success around you. I thank you for the quantity and quality of our infected and incurable, ”writes another Yekaterinburg woman, Elena G., to Artem, thanks to whom Artyom and Kolya K. got into the bitcoin team.

Beautiful stories, confessions of fabulous incomes, photographs from different parts of the world - these are the traditional content of the accounts associated with Pro100business. The speech of the organizers of Pro100business is not always literate, but always emotional. It seems that they never get upset, they don't have a bad mood or problems, they enjoy life all the time. The main message is that anyone can get rich, and for this it is not necessary to work hard, it is enough to become part of a team that, look, travels a lot, moreover on private jets, lives in grand style and loves to have fun so much.

Pro100business could be called the Russian AirBitClub franchise if it were a legal entity. But officially this is not a company, although any private business could envy its turnover. It is not registered on any of its co-founders, among whom there are many people from the Urals.

AirBitClub calls itself "a platform that allows you to profit from cryptocurrency." In describing her work, the words "trading algorithm" and "investments" are used, but in fact she exists by attracting new participants. The contribution, which is 250, 500 or 1 thousand dollars, which each newcomer contributes, is distributed among the current members of the "club", and this process will end when new recruits stop. Investments here mean the income that new participants bring.

AirBitClub provides Pro100business with a service for recording personal accounts of members, an algorithm for distributing members to different levels of the pyramid and calculating rewards. In addition, it provides access to a personal account through which contributions are credited and where rewards are received. For the technical platform, Airbitclub takes 48% of the income, depending on the contribution. This, in particular, is reported in promo videos.

Pro100Business

Despite the fact that the founders of Pro100business call their business a "business on bitcoin", such a "business" could be organized on anything, as long as it provides a constant influx of new members, thanks to whose contributions, income is paid to existing members. Interestingly, contributions to Pro100business are calculated in dollars, the US currency is also the equivalent of income.

The beginner's financial operations begin with the fact that rubles are converted into US dollars, and then into bitcoin at the rate of electronic exchanges through the platform's electronic cabinet. Payments, in turn, are also made through personal Area... The Airbitclub system, upon request, sends funds to the bitcoin wallet specified in the system, and then to the personal account of the member's plastic card in rubles or another currency indirectly through several services. It can be assumed that the organizers of the pyramid receive sums in rubles, since they often take pictures of stacks of large bills or talk about expensive purchases that they make for cash.

Nevertheless, at the seminars, the leaders of Pro100business emphasize that their business is connected exclusively with bitcoins. For new participants, the need to attract other supporters is explained by the fact that the more people buy bitcoin, the more expensive it will be, which means that the more income from investments in it will be. They must be shown a graph of the growth in the value of a cryptocurrency, told about what a cryptocurrency is. For example, part of the seminar by Ivan K., who is listed as its organizer on the Pro100business website, is occupied by videos, including a selection of Channel One stories about cryptocurrency and bitcoin.

Ivan K. is also from Yekaterinburg, but judging by his social networks, he has recently been living in Moscow. His personal group "VKontakte" has 8,300 members, he had meetings with the organizer of AirBitClub, the American Gutenberg Dos Santes. Last year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission punished Gutemberg Dos Santes for organizing a pyramid scheme. Its decision refers to the voluntary surrender to the state of $ 1.4 million in profits and a fine of $ 116,000.

Pro100Business seminars are held in Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Kurgan, Chelyabinsk regions, Perm and Krasnodar Territories, KhMAO, St. Petersburg and Moscow. At the end of last year, Elena G. wrote to VKontakte that a strong leader from Kazakhstan had joined her team. So the structure may start operating in the neighboring state as well.

Pro100Business, built on the international AirBit model, positions itself simply as a "community of people" Page of one of the Pro100Business VKontakte participants

Although some Pro100Business participants declined to comment, one of them, Evgeny Lebedev, agreed to answer questions from the site. According to him, the community numbers about 15 thousand people. “Pro100busines is not an official organization with specific goals and objectives, it is an open community, a group of completely different people, mainly living in Russia and united by work with the AirBitClub content,” Lebedev says. He says that Pro100busines is “a social community that does not involve membership, finance and distribution, it is an open social group of interests, like, for example, a group of fans of equestrian sports, the arts, which anyone can join, not even being a member of AirBitClub. "

Lawyer Alexey Makarov believes that Pro100business activities may fall under Article 172.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Organization of activities to attract funds and (or) other property" if the income of participants is formed by attracting new deposits.

In addition, its organizers may not pay any taxes on Pro100business activities, since the organization is not registered. In addition, since significant funds are being withdrawn from the country, this case may be of interest to Rosfinmonitoring in connection with the implementation of the legislation on combating the legalization (laundering) of money obtained by criminal means.

The chief economist of Expert RA, associate professor of the Faculty of Economics at Moscow State University Anton Tabakh notes that the “life” of financial pyramids is always short-lived. But predicting the moment of its fall is usually difficult. And even a sharp decline in the value of bitcoin, which is "promoted" by such an organization, will not necessarily lead to its collapse. New supporters can be convinced that the growth prospects of cryptocurrency are even better now. Such a pyramid will collapse only when the authorities and the regulator pay attention to it, and potential clients stop falling for fabulous promises.

In the wake of the hype around cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and everything connected with this, the Airbitclub organization appeared in Russia, which promises crazy payments to everyone who joins it. What is this office and is it worth believing? Let's try to figure it out.

Earlier, I already wrote about cryptocurrency and my opinion is this: it is worth buying bitcoin, but not through dubious intermediaries, but on your own.

Airbitclub - what is it?

Airbitclub, pro100business - all this is the name of an ordinary pyramid, which, under the guise of investing in cryptocurrencies and mining, collects money from its followers. Each new member of the pyramid pays an entrance fee (250, 500 or 1000 $), for which he will be charged interest.

Profit is promised from 0.2 to 1.2% per day. Plus all sorts of goodies for the members you attracted.

How does Airbitclub make money?

In their words, they make money by investing in cryptocurrencies, as well as buying mining equipment. What kind of miracle investors are they? Where are their mining farms located? History is silent about this.

In fact, everything is much simpler. This pyramid was created in early 2016. Bitcoin was at its lowest point in the summer of 2015 with a price tag of around $ 200. In the following months, it grew continuously, reaching a price of 20 thousand dollars by the end of 2017!

Such an event could not but create a huge information noise around itself, in the news they only wrote daily about cryptocurrencies, the price of bitcoin, etc. Naturally, the flow of people who wanted to make a fortune was simply enormous. Here the guys from the airbit club set up their nets, attracting those who wish to their office. Nothing personal, about business, as they say themselves.

Airbitclub, pro100business - a scam or not?

Let's just count: Let's say on February 1, 2017, you bought a contract from them for $ 500. They promise a profit of 0.2 to 1.2% per day. Let's take the average - 0.6. 225 business days is 45 weeks, which means 315 calendar days. 0.6% of $ 500 - $ 3 per day. This means that by investing $ 500 in the Airbitclub pyramid, you will receive $ 3 a day from them. In 315 days, you will get back $ 945. Not bad, you might say. And you will be right. Almost 100% profit in less than a year. Banks will not offer this, only cryptocurrencies or pyramids.

However, back to Bitcoin. What if you just go to the exchange and buy yourself $ 500 worth of bitcoin. We are watching the course from February 1, 2017 and from December 11, 2017. Let's take the average based on the Coinmarketcap website

On February 1, the price is $ 978. So for 500 bucks you can buy 0.512 btc. Now we are watching the course from December 11, 2017 - $ 15606. This means that by selling our 0.512 Btc we will get $ 7990 for them.

Can you feel the difference between $ 945 and $ 7990?

I think it's worth making the conclusions yourself. I will put it this way: buy cryptocurrencies, take risks, but do it yourself. The Airbitclub office has existed for two years precisely due to such a giant leap in the bitcoin rate, and its ordinary members profit only by attracting new employees and increasing the rate. Now the rate has fallen by 70% from December 2017 highs. How long will the office pay? Known only to its creators, but they will milk you to the last.

In Russia, the number of members of the Pro100business community, which works according to the principles of a financial pyramid, is increasing. The creators of the scheme use new technologies: supporters are found on social networks, and membership fees are transferred to Bitcoin. Znak talks about the peculiarities of the Russian cryptocurrency pyramid.

In fact, Pro100business is almost indistinguishable from companies like MMM. Even the pyramid ads look like the ads of popular organizations in the 90s. But today, instead of new boots, young millionaires give their wives expensive cars or vacations in the Maldives. Account holders in social networksassociated with Pro100business report fabulous income, and publish beautiful stories and photographs from around the world.

Pro100business organizers always emotionally talk about their successes and create the impression that they are always happy with life. According to them, anyone can get rich, and it doesn't have to work hard. You just need to become part of the team.

Pro100business cannot be called a company: it is not registered with any of its co-founders. As the newspaper notes, Pro100business could be called the Russian AirBitClub franchise. The latter exists by attracting new participants and calls itself a platform that allows you to profit from cryptocurrency. Newbies are required from $ 250 to $ 1000, which are distributed among existing members.

AirBitClub, which was organized by the American Gutemberg Dos Santes, provides services for Pro100business for accounting personal accounts, as well as an algorithm for distributing rewards to members of the pyramid, depending on their level. AirBitClub charges 48% of the revenue for the technical platform, depending on the fee. In 2017, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined Dos Santes $ 116,000 for organizing a pyramid scheme. He also voluntarily donated $ 1.4 million to the state.

A newcomer to Pro100business needs to convert rubles into dollars, and then transfer funds into bitcoins through an electronic account. Payments also go through your personal account. The AirBitClub system sends money to the Bitcoin wallet, and then the funds are transferred to the member's card. However, the founders of the pyramid call Pro100business a "bitcoin business" and insist on this during seminars. Cryptocurrency helps them explain the need to attract new participants: the more people invest in bitcoin, the more expensive it will be (which means that the income from investments will also grow).

Evgeny Lebedev

pro100business participant

"Pro100busines is not an official organization with specific goals and objectives, it is an open community, a group of completely different people, mainly living in Russia and united by work with the AirBitClub content."

Seminars of the Russian pyramid are held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, in the Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Kurgan and Chelyabinsk regions, as well as in the Perm and Krasnodar regions and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. According to lawyer Alexei Makarov, Pro100business activities may fall under Article 172 of the Criminal Code ("Organization of activities to attract funds and (or) other property"). At the same time, the organizers probably do not pay taxes on the work of Pro100business, since the company is not registered anywhere.

Even a sharp drop in the bitcoin rate will not protect gullible Russians from investing in the pyramid, Anton Tabakh, chief economist at Expert RA, is sure. Such a pyramid can collapse only if the authorities and the regulator are interested in it.

Financial pyramids were actively developing in the 90s, the most famous of them was the brainchild of Sergei Mavrodi - the joint stock company "MMM". Unfortunately, the collapse of the pyramid and widespread coverage of this event did not teach our citizens to resist a widespread fraudulent scheme. It would seem that now it is not so easy to find naive investors who would have thoughtlessly invested in any project, without thoroughly studying it from all sides on the Internet, without reading reviews about it. But, as BitCryptoNews learned, such a project exists and is actively developing in 11 countries of the world, including Russia. And his name is AirBitClub or Pro100business. In fact, the Pro100business team is the representative of AirBitClub in Russia.

How money is attracted Pro100business

The story of our investigation began when a friend approached one of the editorial staff with a request to get acquainted with one crypto project and give recommendations on the advisability of investing. He threw a link to the Pro100business website and their correspondence with a representative (curator) on Instagram, in which the curator vehemently and actively encourages them to join their ranks with the words:

Financial pyramid Pro100business

Then, according to a well-established scheme, the curator left his phone number, talked a little with a potential client and gave a link to get acquainted with their super-profitable organization.

The speech in the "breakthrough" video is about a friendly creative team that loves to travel, drive expensive cars and do nothing to themselves, having income from involving new members in their fraudulent scheme. The video even used fragments of the government meeting of V. Putin and a conference with the participation of G. Gref with the subtext of the high potential of using blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the coming years. Brief information from the website of the Pro100business pyramid club:

The scammers from AirBitClub have nothing to do with crypto trading, Bitcoin and BlockChain technologies. The principle of existence and "prosperity" of the club is as follows - you buy a choice of a package of $ 500 or $ 1000, half of the invested funds are deducted to the parent organization for using the service for creating personal accounts, the remaining amount is divided in different proportions between the members of the structure.

Recruiting new victims

But what if there is no money, and the desire to change your life is getting stronger every day? No problem. Anyone can register and earn money through the referral system - write positive reviews about the club, comments everywhere, attract the illiterate population through their personal referral link, receiving a reward for this, and, having hardly typed the required amount of American currency, buy a package for themselves. Now it became clear why VKontakte, Instagram and YouTube are full of positive reviews from “happy” members of the Pro100business community.

Then our journalist decided to contact the representatives of Pro100business by calling David Zakutov's number indicated on the website. When the answering machine reported that the subscriber's phone was turned off, he requested data from representatives in Kurgan and Ufa email club to prepare a request for the organization in which he allegedly "planned to invest." To which there was a refusal with comments: "Good afternoon, please contact your curator, he will inform you on this issue." Learning that our journalist does not have a curator and he represents the media, Ekaterina replied: "I am sorry, but in this case, I am not going to answer your questions, all the best!"

There was no limit to interest, we left an anonymous application for registration on the site, indicating the necessary data and a phone number, but at the time of publication of the material, no response was received. There is no legal information about the club, we conclude that these are scammers.

On June 10-11, 2018, Pro100business is planning a large-scale event called "Assembly of Champions ABC (AirBitClub)". Tickets are paid, the cost is from 10,000 to 111,000 rubles. “When holding the event at Crocus, we have the opportunity to provide 30 parking spaces for participants in business class cars - Mercedes, Porsche, Lexus, BMW,” the website says. There is no limit to the pathos of the organizers. Viktor Gusev was announced as the host of the first day, among the invited speakers was Tina Kandelaki, and the special guest of the event was an artist of the Black Star label - L "ONE. There was no response from his concert manager to a written request for L" ONE's participation. The two-day event will end with a grand party in the ICON club, where, having paid another 4000 rubles for admission, a show program, informal communication and free alcohol (!) Awaits visitors, which is repeatedly emphasized when choosing tickets. The responsible party for the return of tickets was indicated by the Black Star Music Label LLC, indicating the correct INN and OGRN of the organization, this alerted us. As it turned out in telephone conversation with a ticket agency, it was a typo, and the data was instantly corrected by ART PC LLC.

Where to go if you are a victim of online scams?

Pro100business.club is a financial pyramid, by participating in which you will be able to work off the invested funds only by involving new victims of the pyramid in your structure. It is unlikely that after the publication of this article, financial pyramid AirBitClub collapse, as in the distant 1920 collapsed the Ponzi financial pyramid. But we are sure that this article will be useful for society and help protect you and your loved ones from deception.

Unfortunately, online fraud is actively thriving because there is no proven warning system. By phone, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was informed that you can submit a statement about the fact of an offense to your district police officer. Although on the official website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs there is an opportunity to submit an appeal to the Department "K" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (department for the prevention of offenses on the Internet). Applications are considered for a long time, within 30 days after registration. Roskomnadzor does not accept warning statements, and also sends them to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

text: Nikolay Kozhevnikov, Olga Kislinskaya, photo of the MMM poster: ostovnadonu.bezformata.ru, memo "Office" K "warns" from the website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation