Society

The interior Ministry revealed the details of the high-profile case of crypto scammers

The scheme was built on hard psychological pressure: under the guidance of fraudsters, people collected savings and even issued large loans, and then left the money in makeshift hiding places.

ОНТ

Published Oct 8, 2026

In the territory of the Minsk region this year, cases of theft of money from citizens have noticeably increased - attackers used social engineering techniques. The details of the criminal scheme and the circumstances of the detention of 19 defendants in the criminal case were told by Sergey Yakubel, deputy head of the Internal Affairs Department of the Ministry of Regional Executive Committee and head of the criminal police, BelTA reports.

How the fraudsters acted

According to Sergei Yakubel, the attackers put strong psychological pressure on the victims: people gave all their savings and even took large loans from banks. Then, at the direction of the curators, they hid the money in makeshift cachets – usually in sparsely populated villages or in the woods, where there are almost no CCTV cameras and little chance of meeting witnesses. Cash was buried in the ground, where they waited for the arrival of couriers.

How the scheme was uncovered

The head of the criminal police said that the Department conducted a large-scale multilevel analytical work. Law enforcement officers were not limited to fixing individual episodes - they built a general picture, studying in detail every bit of information received. Thanks to this, it was possible to unravel the plan of the criminals and reach out to the intruders, including the coordinators who managed the movements in real time and transmitted the exact coordinates of the hidden funds.

How they laundered

The mechanism of legalization was thought out to the smallest detail. After the seizure of the treasures, a multi-level money laundering system was launched, built so as to confuse the traces as much as possible. The bills passed through a network of intermediaries – each had its own role. The amounts were split, redistributed among the participants of the chain and converted into cryptocurrency.

Shadow "bank" of a criminal group

Law enforcement officers have identified a key defendant – the so-called cryptocurrency, who collected and held large volumes of cryptocurrency, in fact performing the role of the shadow bank of the organization. He not only converted funds, but also managed them, accumulated and distributed at the direction of the coordinators.

Sergey Yakubel noted that the criminal origin of money only fueled the greed of the attacker and his exorbitant appetites. All operations he conducted bypassing the legal digital infrastructure, directing the stolen funds to the opaque segment of crypto platforms. At the same time, the fraudster knew about the working methods of law enforcement agencies and tried to complicate their activities as much as possible.

Everyone acted deliberately

Each participant of the criminal chain – from the courier who took the package to the operator of cryptocurrency conversions – was aware that the money was stolen from Belarusians, and acted intentionally.