S-Group financial pyramid: What lies behind the activities of founders Roman Felik and Vadim Mashurov

S-Group financial pyramid: What lies behind the activities of founders Roman Felik and Vadim Mashurov

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

Just like in MMM—"you sleep, and your money works." Of course, new times, new "gimmicks"—in the S-Group pyramid, people are offered to entrust their money for financial market speculation. Essentially, nothing is new—everything is classic. But there’s a twist—the client will buy and sell shares not through a typical broker in a suit, but a "trading robot with artificial intelligence, specifically developed for such operations by the company’s specialists and tested on various exchanges for over 30,000 hours."

It sounds enticing, but in reality, it’s pure fraud and a typical pyramid scheme. S-Group writes on its website about "long-term prospects" and "a happy future," yet the project literally appeared in 2021 as a rebranding of the previous financial pyramid—Sincere Systems.

Both companies—S-Group and Sincere Systems—are on the lists of suspicious financial projects by the national securities and stock market commission and operate as financial pyramids. In January 2021, the NCSSM added Sincere Systems to its list of suspicious financial projects, linking to their main website https://sincere.systems/. By June 2021, the NCSSM added the same project to the list again but with a new link—https://s-group.io/. It means the swindlers were preparing for a rebranding and had already created a new address but hadn’t changed the name yet.

S-Group has new email addresses with corporate emails @s-group.io. However, the contact section still features the name Company Sincere Systems LTD, with the same registration address in Britain: 71-75 Shelton Street, London.

Moreover, they didn’t put much thought into the rebranding (not that they really hid it), so the new logo hardly differs from the old one. (On the left of the image—Sincere Systems, and on the right—S-Group).

S-Group offers clients investments in the Forex market; companies at the IPO stage; pharmaceuticals; charity. Meanwhile, they promise returns at 15.5% per month.

The Forex market, with its currency speculation, is not intended for beginners, so the company offers you a solution: you hand over money to S-Group for trust management, and in return, a "fully automated robot based on artificial intelligence" rustles with bills for you on the market.

This technology is allegedly rented from a certain DDS. Vadim Mashurov, one of the co-founders of S-Group, in his speech for project participants, recounts that DDS is a reputable company that can be found online in just two minutes. On the company’s official website, alongside famous foreign legal entities, S-Group is listed under the brand Sincere Systems Group:

Vadim Mashurov refers us to a trusted source, Bloomberg. However, when you go to the information about DDS in the Bloomberg company catalog, you see a completely different company. There, the information is about a Japanese organization providing information security system development services.

The company is named DDS and it’s deciphered as Digital Development Systems. But Vadim Mashurov, in his presentation, offered a different interpretation—Deployable Data Solutions.

For a smart person, this would already be sufficient, especially considering Vadim Mashurov’s figure (more on him later), but S-Group has prepared another tale for clients—it positions itself as a British company, which significantly increases the trust level among uninformed people.

The official registration address of the company Sincere Systems (registered under the same name as S-Group "startup") is in the United Kingdom: 71-75 Shelton Street, London, Greater London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ. There’s no office there, and as rating-market reports, it’s just an office selling registration under their address for just 39 pounds.

The director of the company is Ukrainian citizen Maryana Roitburd. The authorized capital is 1 pound sterling (a solid amount for a large investment company). However, S-Group itself declares that its authorized capital is 5 million pounds sterling, but the documents speak for themselves:

Maryana Roitburd is an owner, beneficiary, director, or former director of over 100 various companies in total.

The range of companies Maryana Roitburd owns covers almost every possible area of business in Ukraine. Therefore, it is likely she is simply a nominal owner of the "British investment fund" that S-Group claims to be.

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

The new legal address is now in Kyiv, in a residential building in the sleeping district Vinogradar.

Furthermore, one of the firms led by Mrs. Roitburd—PJSC "Insurance company ’EKKO’"—disappeared in 2016 along with its clients’ money:

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

Now back to one of its founders—Vadim Mashurov.

Enough? But that’s not all. The name Mashurov leads us to his companions: Dmitry Kvashnevsky, Alexey Didychenko, and Roman Felik—well-known criminal pyramid schemers:

Dmitry Kvashnevsky, for instance, a blogger actively promoting anyone who pays him. Before starting to promote Sincere System, he was advertising the infamous B2B Jewelry pyramid, which robbed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, along with several other financial scams. According to the pyramid’s own promoters, Kvashnevsky personally attracted scammed investors with investments worth $500,000.

Alexey Didychenko is even an experienced financial fraudster whom the prosecutor’s office attempted to prosecute back in 2017 for creating the "Helix" pyramid. At that time, Didychenko went into hiding from the investigation. Until recently, he flaunted a luxurious lifestyle abroad and continued to deliver "online lessons" for naive pyramid investors.

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

Eight or nine years ago, Roman Felik, together with Alexey Didychenko, organized a pyramid in Ternopil under the guise of a British HELIX Capital. They began collecting money for the "Swiscooin" cryptocurrency, which eventually collapsed, but for Felik’s clients, it didn’t change anything—he received the money in cash, strictly in dollar bills, often without even issuing receipts to clients.

How such "investors" fell for it is unclear, but the outcome is evident: over 500 people, according to police statements, transferred about two million dollars to Felik. And that’s only those who weren’t shy to report it. Law enforcement officers estimate that the actual number of "investors" was at least ten times more.

If this information isn’t enough to understand that S-Group and Sincere Systems are fraudulent schemes, then in addition to the resolution of the Ukrainian national securities and stock market commission, there are similar resolutions from analogous bodies in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Yes, despite the conflict, Felik’s pyramid is operating in Russia, although it is blacklisted by the Central Bank of Russia.

Regarding Kazakhstan, the situation is similar:

However, Kazakhstan has gone further than Russia—they have opened a criminal case regarding the activities of the pyramid’s organizers.

Hundreds of articles have already been written about the new pyramid from Felik and Mashurov. But history teaches us that it teaches us nothing. The sad saga of the MMM pyramid is known to everyone. However, the dream of something for nothing overcomes all, and thousands of fools are eager to give their money to the new Mavrodi.

Ольга Балакина