Cryptopay and Freewallet are two of the largest fraudulent projects on the cryptocurrency market. And as it turned out, the same people are behind both services. Today we will tell you about the owners and managers of two of the most notorious cryptocurrency scams of 2023.
Dmitry Gunyashov
The first person worth mentioning on our list is Dmitry Andreevich Gunyashov. This man was born in 1988 in St. Petersburg (at that time Leningrad), where he is registered to this day. However, on Dmitry’s official Facebook page it is indicated that he lives in the capital of Portugal, Lisbon. At the same time, Dmitry does not hide his affiliation with the top management of Cryptopay. Both the official documents of the service and its personal pages indicate that Gunyashov is the co-founder and head of Cryptopay. As for Freewallet, there are no such mentions in the public space. But we will talk about this aspect a little later.
In addition to Cryptopay and Freewallet, Gunyashov can be associated with two more projects, although not cryptocurrency ones:
- Online store selling iPhones in St. Petersburg. Founded in 2012. He worked for several months, because Gunyashov obviously realized that he couldn’t make a business out of retail sales of smartphones. Then he began working on his cryptocurrency projects.
- Foundation for the Development of Russian Martial Arts. In this organization, Dmitry is not listed as a founder or leader, and most likely did not take a significant part in the activities. But Gunyashov’s cell phone is still listed in the contact list of the “Martial Arts Center” financed by the foundation.
As we can see, Dmitry does not have any solid background that would allow him to become the head of one of the leading crypto projects. He did not distinguish himself either in the field of IT or in the field of finance. Why did Gunyashov manage to get thousands of clients for his applications and websites?
The answer is simple: Gunyashov created a kind of financial pyramid in which old victims “pay” for attracting new ones. Moreover, unlike conditional MMMs and other “classic” scams, neither Freewallet nor Cryptopay give even a hint of the risk of losing money. The scheme is quite simple, but very effective:
- The client creates an account (Freewallet wallet or account on the Cryptopay exchange).
- He deposits money into the balance (tokens, coins, and in the case of an exchange, fiat).
- Under the pretext of a technical failure or as part of the KYC policy, the victim’s account is blocked. Moreover, from the very beginning the user does not have private keys, so the user cannot withdraw assets.
- Some of the victims’ money is appropriated by scammers, and some is used for aggressive marketing promotion of the wallet and exchange.
Both Freewallet org and Cryptopay have extremely bad reputations in the crypto community.
Vasily Meshcheryakov
Like Gunyashov, Vasily Vyacheslavovich Meshcheryakov was born in Leningrad. This happened in 1984. Like Gunyashov, Meshcheryakov has no “history”. Vasily did not publish any information about his education or information about any successful startups.
However, according to information from open sources, it is not difficult to understand what role Meshcheryakov plays in the group of fraudulent owners of Freewallet and Cryptopay.
Back in 2016, Vasily became the founder of a telegram channel and blog dedicated to video games. The ability to work with a young, computer-savvy audience helped Vasily think through the concept of “promoting” Freewallet and Cryptopay. So today it is he who is responsible in the company for PR and media promotion of the fraudulent schemes created by Gunyashov.
Other personalities
If we talk about Freewallet, the official co-founder and project manager is Estonian citizen Alvin Hagg. But on a number of resources, Freewallet victims have repeatedly wondered why Mr. Hagg himself shied away from public events, although it would seem that the leader of such a project should have participated as actively as possible in conferences and seminars. According to commentators, the reason may be trivial – Alvin does not understand IT, and only serves as a nominal director. Therefore, in order not to demonstrate the incompetence of the “leader,” posts are published on websites and pages in his name. But the “founder” of Freewallet himself avoids publicity.
In addition, other people may be involved in the activities of CryptoPay and Freewallet.
Alexey Gunyashov
Brother of Dmitry Gunyashov. This guy doesn’t have much commercial talent. The maximum in which he showed himself was in advertising dubious investment projects reminiscent of a financial pyramid, only a very primitive one. For example, in 2020, he invited clients to invest money in the Integrity Farm project, related to growing plants in vertical farms. Gunyashov could not offer anything other than promises of great prospects and income, so most likely, if there were investments in such a pyramid, their amount would not be comparable to the losses from the activities of Freewallet and Cryptopay.
Anton Makhno
This man often pops up in photographs and discussions of Gunyashov. But there are no publicly available materials where Makhno advertises fraudulent services. Therefore, Anton’s affiliation with Freewallet and Cryptopay is still in doubt.
Based on this, we can say confidently:
- Dmitry Gunyashov is not only the owner of the fraudulent exchange Cryptopay, but also the real founder (or co-founder) of the Freewallet project.
- Vasily Meshcheryakov (possibly together with his wife Natalya Ogneva) is engaged in marketing promotion of projects. In addition, Meshcheryakov also has a personal business aimed at audiences from Russia.
- Alvin Hagg, Alexey Gunyashov, Anton Makhno and other people may be involved in fraudulent activities. In particular, Hagg, being the nominal leader of Freewallet, is certainly responsible for the theft of client assets. But in order to identify all those involved, it is necessary to conduct an investigation, since only the enormity of the scams under the names Freewallet and Cryptopay is obvious from open sources.
