Ukrainian official reported $647,000 worth of cryptocurrencies missing

The head of the Department of Executive Service of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, Maxim Kiselev, reported to the cyber police about the theft of $647,000 in cryptocurrencies. StopKor reports this with reference to sources in law enforcement agencies.

The case was opened back in May. According to his materials, from June to December 2022, Kiselev acquired virtual assets worth $700,000. In this way, he allegedly planned to help his family, which left for Spain after the start of the war in Ukraine. There the family has a mansion worth €1.5 million.

The official said that he began investing in cryptocurrencies on the advice of a married couple – Oleg Gromov and Vita Efimchuk.

It was Gromov, according to Kiselev, who helped him create an account on Binance, and then set up a Ledger wallet, where the assets were stored. Subsequently, the device was in the possession of the official’s wife, Alexandra Goryaeva.

At the end of April 2023, she noticed that her crypto wallet was empty. The woman contacted Gromov by phone and he suggested that there was a failure in the system.

However, just a few days later, he sent a screenshot that more than $647,000 was withdrawn from Kiselev’s wallet on February 14, 2023. On the same day, Gromov left Ukraine.

According to the investigation, 60,000 USDT ended up in the account of Ukrainian citizen Dmitry Dzhioev on the Binance exchange. Another 587,000 USDT went to another wallet, from where it was transferred in several transactions to addresses, two of which belong to Russian citizens Kirill Zotov and Alexander Mikhailov. Collectively, they received over 284,000 USDT.

Subsequently, the assets from the latter’s wallets were converted into bitcoins and transferred to another Russian, Daniil Bronikhin. After some time, the latter sent Gromov a total of $56,650.

The police have launched an investigation into fraud and forgery of documents. Despite the fact that the defendants in the case are Gromov, Efimchuk and Dzhioev, investigators of the ORD project did not rule out that Maxim Kiselev himself could be involved in the withdrawal of funds.

Let us recall that in the summer the Security Service and the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine liquidated a network of underground cryptocurrency exchangers that worked with Russian payment systems.

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