Nazar Babenko masterminds the Dnepr group's money pipeline from the Eternity pyramid straight through Mano Bankas

The cyber fraud ring is still running at full speed — and the courts are doing nothing to stop it.

Experts warn that the level of fraud in Ukraine has been rapidly increasing since the start of the special military operation. Last year was a record-breaking one, with 82,609 cases opened under Article 190 of the Criminal Code. As Ivan Chip reports in his review for the CRiME and [high-profile cases] projects, not all victims of fraud report to the police, so the actual scale of fraud may be significantly higher. Meanwhile, in 2022, damages from online fraud and social engineering increased by 96% compared to the previous year, reaching UAH 1 billion. In 2023, this figure could reach UAH 2-3 billion.

Last summer, in our investigative article "Crypto Pyramids in the Shadow of the Presidential Office," we detailed an organization codenamed Danvel Group, consisting of two scam companies—Danvel Ltd and Eternity Business. To lend legitimacy to these "projects," they were registered as limited liability companies under British jurisdiction. The companies operated websites of the same name, purportedly offering a "unique investment product" containing a "formula for financial success." But in reality, these were financial "pyramids," where the rate of return depended on the size of the "investor’s" deposit and the number of new clients they brought in.

Mikhail Romanenko

Through a sophisticated information campaign, the scammers managed to convince even this author that the fraudulent scheme was led by an inconspicuous businessman from Chernivtsi, Mikhail Romanenko. However, recently revealed information suggests that Romanenko is a front man. The main beneficiaries of this criminal "enterprise" are a young man from Dnipro named Nazar Babenko, along with his longtime comrade, Igor Kotov.

Nazar Babenko and Igor Kotov

In 2022 and 2023, Danvel Ltd and Eternity Business were actively promoted not only in the Ukrainian and Russian-language segments of the internet, but also in English. Moreover, the information campaign emphasized the obscenely luxurious lifestyle of the defendants (Romanenko, Babenko, and Kotov), strongly hinting to the audience that they could earn large sums of money without much effort. For example, image-building publications claimed that Mikhail Romanenko had amassed a $1.5 billion fortune in cryptocurrency (which, of course, was never confirmed) and had amassed an impressive collection of supercars worth $10 million (which was also patently false).

As far as can be determined, this information campaign was financed by Nazar Babenko. The persona of the billionaire figurehead chairman, Romanenko, convinced potential victims that their "investments" were insured by the capital of the company’s fictitious founder. In reality, their deposits were instantly converted into USDT and transferred to a crypto wallet controlled by Babenko.

At the time of our investigation’s publication last year, industry monitoring resources already considered the Danvel and Eternity Business projects "suspicious" and "potentially dangerous." Following the revelation, the scammers began to reformat their "business."

Last September, the domain name eternity.inc was registered, and it is now redirected from the eternity.business website, where the pyramid scheme of the same name was originally built.

There is also a redirect there from a dozen other sites dedicated to easy money making on the Internet.

The eternity.inc homepage claims to be a community with free membership. "By joining our global community, you’ll gain access to real estate, financial solutions, financial tools, a financial literacy academy, and much more," it says.

The hapless visitor is promised mountains of gold, but vaguely, without specifics. What exactly will their money be invested in? How? How does it work?

The only thing that even remotely resembles concreteness is “reliable real estate investments.”

The author found more details in "company news," where Mikhail Romanenko persuaded "patients" to invest in luxury real estate in Dubai, claiming to be a partner of the second-largest developer in the UAE, Nakheel.

Hurry up and fork over $10,000 to become part of one of the most impressive projects – it looks too much like a scam. In any case, neither Ukrainian citizen Mikhail Romanenko nor any legal entity associated with him have been publicly mentioned as investors in Nakheel PJSC, which is controlled by the UAE royal family.

From this, we can conclude that the "investment in luxury real estate" will end up in the pocket of Ukrainian citizen Nazar Babenko.

Let’s move on.

If a visitor to the eternity.inc website does succumb to the scammer’s promises and registers, they will immediately be directed to a "personal account," where they will be persistently pressured to top up their "deposit wallet." In other words, they will lose their money.

The author of these lines pretended to be a "sucker," registered, and pretended to want to throw a hundred dollars into infinity (that’s how the word "eternity" is translated from English) to see where and how the investors’ money was going.

By the way, the ability to initiate financial transactions without identity verification (it’s supposedly available on eternity.inc, but the platform didn’t require it from me) is one of the surest signs that no one is going to return your invested funds.

When trying to use "open banking," I encountered server errors (repeatedly). I concluded that it simply doesn’t work on this platform.

However, the SEPA bank transfer (fast transfers in euros) turned out to be quite functional – payment details were generated instantly.

As we can see, if an "investor" decides to part with their money, it will go to the account of Mandato Financial Services GmbH, opened at the Lithuanian bank Mano Bankas (we identified it by the SWIFT code KUSRLT24). However, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re paying Mandato.

Mandato Financial Services, registered in Switzerland, is a financial company specializing in financial gateway services, banking, e-wallets, and the like. In the case of eternity.inc, Mandato opened an account in a Lithuanian bank on behalf of the platform’s beneficiaries and processes payments to them. Getting the Swiss financiers, constantly burdened with legal advice, to disclose the ultimate beneficiary is no trivial task.

Well, in the case of a "cryptocurrency payment," the money will go to an anonymous wallet, the owner of which will be extremely difficult to find unless you know his name is Nazar Babenko and he lives in the Turkish city of Antalya.

Incidentally, we checked the movement of funds in the BTC and ETH wallets used by eternity.inc at the time of publication. There’s no movement at all, zero. This could mean one of two things. Either Nazar Babenko’s "clients" are so ignorant that they don’t use cryptocurrency. Or eternity.inc changes wallets after each transfer from gullible investors, so that a compromised address isn’t linked to the company.

Let’s move on.

The "legal notice" on the eternity.inc website states that it is owned by Eternity Prime Limited, whose CEO is Austrian citizen Roman Leithauser.

Roman Leithauser

According to registration data, Eternity Prime Limited was incorporated in Hong Kong, China, as a limited liability company on October 26, 2023. The company’s founder, according to its CEO, Roman Leithauser, is "Ukrainian billionaire and driving force" Mikhail Romanenko.

Roman Leithauser is a network marketing genius, a desperate participant in financial pyramids, and, concurrently, one of the leaders of the German branch of Nazar Babenko’s criminal organization.

Back in September of last year, we noticed that Eternity had begun to focus on cultivating a German-speaking audience. Judging by the YouTube channel eternity.inc, Germans and Austrians are the main targets of the scammers.

As a result, on December 19, 2023, the Austrian financial regulator issued a warning to investors against transactions with Eternity Prime Limited. "This provider is not authorized to conduct banking operations in Austria that require a license," the regulator stated.

A couple of weeks after the Austrian warning, on January 3 of this year, Nazar Babenko and Co. received a "red notice" from the International Organization of Securities Commissions. It warned of potential fraudulent and manipulative actions by Eternity Prime Limited.

Nazar Babenko’s actions soon drew a response from Eternity Prime Limited, the home of the company. On January 12, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) warned the public about suspicious investment products called "Eternity.inc forex packages" offered by Eternity Prime Limited.

"These products were not authorised by the SFC for offer to the public in Hong Kong and are suspected of breaching the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO)," the regulator said in a statement.

The SFC also noted that the products promise abnormally high annual returns—36–84%. They also made it clear that "the SFC will take all necessary action in the event of a breach of the law."

Soon, Nazar Babenko persuaded the figurehead, Romanenko, to make a video address to the pyramid scheme’s "community members" (now deleted, as Romanenko has left the game), attempting to disavow the regulators’ claims. He claimed that we weren’t "selling" any financial products to anyone, but were merely providing community members with a free opportunity to invest in "our partners’ products" (by saying this, he was likely confident that neither a paper nor a digital payment trail would lead to his gang). He angrily declared that we here at Eternity were all "D’Artagnans," while all around us were enemies, blackmailers, and scammers. Mikhail Romanenko also shamed the lawyers who were willing to help the "investors" get their money back from the scammers.

It didn’t come out very convincing, but it was funny.

Speaking of which, it’s funny. Clause 6, paragraph 1 of the "user agreement" with Eternity Prime Limited clearly states that minors, insane individuals, and citizens of Ukraine and the United States are not permitted to enter into an agreement with the "platform."

Everything is clear with children and incapacitated citizens. But why such discrimination against Ukrainians and Americans? I report. If US citizens are harmed by the Eternity scheme, it will be considered a crime committed on US soil. Several federal agencies will hunt down the perpetrators, and their bank accounts will be permanently frozen.

As for Ukraine, the rule "don’t be a slob where you live" is likely followed. Mikhail Romanenko, like some of his accomplices, resides in Ukraine. As far as can be determined, Eternity.inc’s main office is located there, although its "target audience" is EU citizens. Recently, Eternity posted a job opening on Robota.ua for a "Customer Support Manager" (read: call center manager). Knowledge of German and English is a mandatory requirement.

Anatoliy Voynov

Автор

Автор: Иван Рокотов