Russia Cracks Down on Unlicensed Exchanges Amid Ongoing Call-Center Fraud

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Interior Ministry have shut down nine unlicensed cryptocurrency exchanges in Moscow City, detaining over 20 employees. The operation is linked to a Ukraine-based call-center fraud scheme that impersonated Russian officials to panic victims into moving their savings to 'safe accounts.'

According to the FSB, the scheme involved callers posing as FSB or Rosfinmonitoring officers, convincing victims to transfer funds to 'safe accounts' and then collecting the cash from couriers. The cash was converted to cryptocurrency at one of the unlicensed exchange points, which were controlled by handlers in Ukraine.

The detained employees claimed that up to $2 million moved through their office alone in a single day, with a combined daily volume of $1-2 million and around 30 clients visited per day. The FSB frames its detainees as 'young people from the Russian regions looking for easy money' with limited financial literacy.

However, one detainee's account complicates this picture, stating that some employees believed they were acting as informal informants for the FSB or Rosfinmonitoring, not a fraud ring. The raid comes weeks before Russia's new crypto-licensing regime takes effect on September 1.