ICOAdm.in – Another Questionable Project Led by Vladislav Smirnov & Gery Shalon – Part 1

There is a war going on in the illicit online broker and crypto sphere between different groups of people blaming each other of being the bigger cybercriminals. That’s good for all of us and actually provided the stage for enforcement actions. In fighting each other all parties expose information needed by authorities and FinTelegram. In our recent posts, we have focused on exposing the notorious JPMorgan Chase hacker Gery Shalon and his vast network of associates and even family members, running various online scams and frauds. Today we are going to discuss another alleged scam, called ICOAdm.in, led by his close associate Vladislav Smirnov.

Vladislav Smirnov And NetPay

During the ICO boom in 2017, Krypton Solutions, a company registered in the Marshall Islands and a member company of Krypton Capital, ventured into developing an ICO dashboard solution to support clients running crowdfunding campaigns. According to Krypton Solutions, the company invested over €310,000 in the development and promotion of the software solution. They contracted a company called NetPay LLC for development and management support. This company is part of the network of companies of the famous Russian software developer, hacker and spammer Vladislav Smirnov.

However, once the solution was ready and deployed NetPay purportedly refused to hand over the source code and started operating and marketing the software solution under the fake company, Krypton Moscow (which allegedly breached Krypton Capital’s trademarks and used the same branding and logo etc.). Krypton Moscow is also a company associated with Vladislav Smirnov.

The Issues At Stake

But there is more than just ICOadm.in at stake. Purportedly, Krypton Capital found out that NetPay and Krypton Moscow are are entities owned by Vladislav Smirnov and Gery Shalon, both of whom are known to run scam schemes and operate illicit payment platforms. While Gery Shalon was arrested in and indicted by U.S. authorities in 2015 and 2016 respectively, his European partner Gal Barak was arrested just recently in Sofia for financial crimes, money laundering, and fraud. FinTelegram already published a few articles on this enforcement action.

Sabir Magdeev, the new CEO of ICOAdm.in evidently contacted all clients and asked them to send their funds to different cryptocurrency wallets which were controlled by Vladislav Smirnov, as the screenshots below show:

According to Krypton Solutions, the entire existing team of ICOadm.in, shown below, is involved in deceiving clients into believing that they are working for the legitimate Krypton Capital.

As a recourse, Krypton Solutions has sent notices to NetPay, asking them to hand over the source code which rightfully belongs to Krypton Solutions, as well as reimburse their clients and pay damages for harming Krypton’s reputation, which has led to the legitimate company losing clients and business to the tune of €1,350,000.

However, Krypton Solutions argued, the beneficial owners of NetPay and Krypton Moscow, Vladislav Smirnov and Gery Shalon are not legitimate businessmen at all. Following Krypton Solutions’ position, they seem intent to continue using Krypton’s brand and reputation to scam unsuspecting clients.

Vladislav Smirnov’s Statement

FinTelegram reached out to Vladislav Smirnov and he confirmed the relationship between Krypton Solutions and NetPay. Moreover, in a statement, he confirmed the existence of the order to develop the ICOadm.in software for Krypton Solution. He sent over a letter he received von Krypton Solution. The content of the letter pretty much confirms Krypton Solutions’ allegations:

While Vladislav Smirnov confirms the view of Krypton Solutions he insists that he is an investor of Krypton Capital and hence sort of takes ICOadm.in as a hostage to get what he wants from Krypton Solutions and/or Krypton Capital. Despite several attempts, FinTelegram has not received any supporting documents from Smirnov to prove his claims whereas we have been able to read through the files of Krypton Capital and Krypton Solutions.

As ICOadm.in is on the screen of authorities already, we have reached out to several ICOadm.in clients to get their comments. Currently, we work on part 2 of this story covering CrowdWiz, which is one of the ICOs feeling scammed by ICOAdm.in. Furthermore, we will bring more details on Vladislav Smirnov, his position and network. He for sure is a person of interest in this criminal case as he is a partner of Gal Barak and Gery Shalon and the expert in illicit payment schemes in this context. He already confirmed to us that he is related to Dreams Pay in Moscow, one of the illicit payment schemes on the authorities radar. Allegedly, Smirnov is the beneficial owner of Binex Group LP which he sort of denies.

Given the information we have received and worked through so far with our auditors and lawyers, Krypton Solutions position seems to be viable. Even though there may be open issues on the level of the shareholders and/or beneficial owners of Krypton Capital, we don’t see any legitimate ground to keep ICOadm.in.

Our readers, potential victims, and authorities may be sure that more information will come up in this fight between the former partners in the broker & crypto environment.

Bribing And Threatening FinTelegram

As described in our latest article, the FinTelegram team was worked closely with enforcement agencies and lawyers to support the enforcement actions against the perhaps largest European cybercrime organization. To do so we worked closely with key insiders and received tons of information from them which we happily shared with authorities.

In the last couple of weeks Gery Shalon, Vladislav Smirnov, and the now arrested Gal Barak attempted to bribe and threaten the FinTelegram CEO, his partners, and the insiders in this criminal case. Moreover, they continue to publish funny fake sites to point to others for their actions. Frankly, we feel honored to be the target of their campaigns and have to hope that this fight between the parties continues in the very best interest of authorities and FinTelegram’s traffic data.

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