How the creators of the financial pyramid S-Group, Roman Felik and Vadym Mashurov, lure investors under the guise of investments

How the creators of the financial pyramid S-Group, Roman Felik and Vadym Mashurov, lure investors under the guise of investments

Since the spring of last year, the "new financial startup" S-Group has been actively advertised on the Internet. People are invited to invest their money and receive a huge passive income of up to 150% per annum.

Just like with MMM - "you sleep, and your money works for you". Of course, new times, new "features" - in the S-Group pyramid, people are offered to entrust their money for speculation in financial markets. Essentially, nothing new – it follows the classic scheme. But there is a twist - buying and selling stocks for the client will be done not by an ordinary broker in a suit, but by a "trading robot with artificial intelligence, specially developed for such operations by the company’s specialists and tested on various exchanges for over 30,000 hours".

Sounds enticing, but in reality, it’s pure scam and an ordinary pyramid scheme. S-Group writes on its website about a "long-term perspective" and a "happy future", but the project itself literally appeared in 2021 as a rebranding of the previous financial pyramid - Sincere Systems.

Both companies, S-Group and Sincere Systems, are on the list of dubious financial projects by the national commission on securities and stock market and operate following the financial pyramid scheme. In January 2021, the National Commission on Securities and Stock Market added Sincere Systems to its list of dubious financial projects, providing a link to their homepage - https://sincere.systems/. Already in June 2021, the commission again added this very project Sincere Systems to the list, but under a new link - https://s-group.io/. That is, the scammers were preparing for a rebranding and had already created a new address, but didn’t manage to change the name yet.

S-Group has new email addresses with the corporate email @s-group.io. However, in the contacts section, the name Company Sincere Systems LTD still hangs, with the same registered address in the UK: 71-75 Shelton Street, London.

Besides, they didn’t think much over the rebranding (and didn’t really hide it), so the new logo is almost identical to the old one. (On the image, Sincere Systems is on the left, and S-Group is on the right).

 

S-Group offers clients to invest in the Forex market; companies at the IPO stage; pharmaceuticals; charity. At the same time, they promise a return of 15.5% per month.

The Forex market, with its currency speculation, is not at all for beginners, so the company offers you a solution: you entrust S-Group with your money for management, and on the market, a "automated robot based on artificial intelligence" rustling with banknotes for you.

S-Group allegedly rents this technology from a certain DDS. Vadym Mashurov, one of S-Group’s co-founders, in his speech for project participants, says that DDS is a reputable company that can be googled literally in two minutes. On the official website of the company, S-Group is listed alongside famous foreign legal entities under the brand Sincere Systems Group:

 

Vadym Mashurov refers to a trusted source, Bloomberg agency. However, by following the link to the information about DDS in the Bloomberg Companies Catalog, we see a completely different company. There is information about a Japanese organization providing information security systems development services.

The company is named DDS and stands for Digital Development Systems. But in his presentation, Vadym Mashurov offered a different interpretation - Deployable Data Solutions.

For a smart person, this would already be enough, especially considering the figure of Vadym Mashurov (more on him later), but S-Group has another fairy tale prepared for clients – it positions itself as a British company, which significantly increases its trustworthiness among uninformed individuals.

The official registration address of the company Sincere Systems (under this name the "startup" S-Group is registered) is in Britain: 71-75 Shelton Street, London, Greater London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ. There is no office there, and as reported by rating-market, it’s simply an office that sells registration at its address for just 39 pounds.

The director of the company is a citizen of Ukraine, Maryana Roitburd. The share capital is 1 British pound (a solid amount for a large investment company). True, at S-Group they claim that their share capital is 5 million British pounds, but the documents speak for themselves:

Maryana Roitburd is an owner, beneficiary, director, or former director of a total of more than 100 different companies.

The comprehensive spectrum of companies owned by Maryana Roitburd covers almost every possible direction of business in Ukraine. Therefore, most likely, she is just a fictional owner of the "British investment fund" as positioned by S-Group.

Moreover, on October 28, 2021, the company suddenly changes its registration address:

Now, the legal address is located in Kyiv, in an apartment building in the Vynohradar residential district of the capital.

Moreover, one of the firms headed by Ms. Roitburd, PJSC "Insurance Company ’EKKO’" disappeared in 2016 with the money of its clients:

The figure of Maryana Roitburd, the registration and re-registration address, complement our conclusion that S-Group is a pyramid scheme.

And now let’s return to the figure of one of its founders – Vadym Mashurov.

Enough? But that’s not all. The surname Mashurov leads us to his partners: Dmytro Kvashnevskyi, Oleksiy Didichenko and Roman Felik – famous criminal pyramid schemers:

Dmytro Kvashnevskyi, for example, is a blogger who actively promotes anyone who pays him. Before starting to promote Sincere System, he advertised the infamous B2B Jewelry pyramid, which robbed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and a number of other financial scams. According to the pyramid organizers, Kvashnevskyi personally attracted scammed investors for $500,000.

Oleksiy Didichenko is an even more experienced financial fraudster, whom the prosecutor’s office tried to hold accountable in 2017 for creating the "Helix" pyramid. Then Didichenko evaded the investigation. Until recently, he flaunted a luxurious life abroad and continued to give "online lessons" for the gullible investors of the pyramid.

The fourth project participant, Roman Felik from Ternopil, was involved in the same criminal case as Didichenko, and the prosecutor’s office still has serious questions for him.

About eight or nine years ago, Roman Felik, together with Oleksiy Didichenko, organized a pyramid in Ternopil under the guise of British HELIX Capital. And began collecting money from it for cryptocurrency "Sviscoin," which successfully collapsed, but for Felik’s clients, nothing really changed - he received money in cash, strictly in dollars, often not even giving the clients at least a receipt.

How the "investors" were enticed by this is unclear, but nonetheless, the result is evident: over 500 people turned to the police, and according to their statements, they handed over about two million dollars to Felik. And this is just those who were not embarrassed to file a statement. According to law enforcement estimates, in fact, the number of "investors" was at least ten times more.

If this information is not enough to understand that S-Group and Sincere Systems are fraudulent schemes, then in addition to the decision by the Ukrainian national commission on securities and stock market, there are similar decisions by analogous bodies from Russia and Kazakhstan.

Yes, despite the conflict, Felik’s and the company’s pyramid operates in Russia, although it is blacklisted by the Bank of Russia.

Regarding Kazakhstan, the situation is similar:

 

However, Kazakhstan went further than Russia - a criminal case was opened regarding the activities of the pyramid organizers.

Hundreds of materials have been written about the activities of the new pyramid by Felik and Mashurov. But history teaches us nothing. The sad saga of the Mavrodi’s pyramid is known to all. However, the dream of easy money overcomes everything, and thousands of foolish people are eager to give their money to a new Mavrodi.

Ольга Балакина