Moscow Crypto Exchange Shut Down After Pensioner’s Complaint, Oct 26, 2026

Law enforcement officers in Moscow have shut down a cryptocurrency exchange and detained five of its employees. The trigger was a complaint from a 73-year-old pensioner who reported to the police that a large sum of money had been taken from her through deception.

The elderly Russian woman stated that unknown callers posing as representatives from various government agencies contacted her. They claimed her account on the state services portal (Gosuslugi) had been hacked and that she was suspected of violating the law. To “avoid prison,” she was instructed to withdraw all funds from her account and hand them over to a courier for verification. The pensioner believed them, withdrew 13.3 million rubles from a bank, packaged the cash in a bag, and handed it directly to a young man on the street who presented himself as a courier. It was only later that the woman realized she had been deceived.

Police detained the 22-year-old courier, who confessed that he had delivered the money to one of Moscow’s cryptocurrency exchanges. Officers searched the exchange’s offices on Mantulinskaya Street and Presnenskaya Embankment, where they detained four men aged 20 to 30. All of them had arrived from the Volgograd region, authorities clarified. During the searches, officials found documents related to cryptocurrency transactions, money-counting machines, a shredder, and more than 5 million rubles in cash.

Shortly after, another suspect in the “illegal exchange of cryptocurrency funds,” a 26-year-old man, was detained at the airport as he was preparing to fly out of Moscow. The five suspects were placed in custody, while the courier who took the money from the elderly woman was released under a promise not to leave town.

Additionally, police detained two more couriers at the cryptocurrency exchange: a 19-year-old woman and an 18-year-old man. According to investigators, they were preparing to exchange money obtained from deceived individuals into cryptocurrency. Authorities seized more than 3 million rubles in cash from the young couple.

In early August, the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia announced the detention of about 20 employees of cryptocurrency exchanges in the Moscow-City business center, suspected of assisting fraudsters. At that time, authorities claimed to have shut down nine cryptocurrency exchanges, “cutting off nine channels for transferring money abroad using cryptocurrency.” According to the FSB, Ukrainian call centers were using these platforms to launder money stolen from Russians.