Over 2,000 residents of the Kazakh capital have become deceived investors of financial pyramids since the beginning of this year. Cases against pyramid scheme fraudsters have already been referred to the court by the Department of Economic Investigations of Nur-Sultan. According to its spokesperson Timur Mukanov, the number of those who want to increase their funds in such a dishonest way is on the rise. Mainly, the fraudsters pretend to be employees of financial and analytical companies.
“Pyramid scheme cases involving more than 1,000 depositors are under judicial investigation. So far, there have been financial fraud reports from depositors. They claim that they contributed certain funds and didn’t receive the profit they had been promised earlier. Financial pyramids mostly come from outside the country, that is from Russia or other states,” said Mukanov.
Resident of Nur-Sultan Gulzhan Bukharova is one of the victims of such financial fraudsters. In pursuit of easy profit the woman lost US$35,000. Her relatives were also deceived by financial pyramids.
“One of the acquaintances of mine suggested me this scheme, and I invested a large amount of money there. They promised that I would get one percent daily in cryptocurrency. In fact, we have not seen it at all. And the website itself turned out to be fake,” said Bukharova.
There are a number of signs to identify a financial pyramid. The officers of the city department urge to pay special attention to them.
“The first one is the lack of a license given by the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market to accept deposits. The organization does not have clear activities. The financial position of the company, the turnover of funds, the course of business processes and others are not transparent. Also, there is no guarantee of investments safety. Mandatory entrance fees are one of the signs. We urge the citizens to avoid any coincidence with any of the abovementioned items, and to increase the financial literacy of the population,” added Mukanov.
The Financial Monitoring Agency uses a wide range of analytical tools in the fight against financial pyramids. A detailed mechanism for blocking websites that advertise fraudulent schemes has been developed. As a result, nearly 3,000 such sites were suspended immediately.
