Kazakhstan: Ilyas Karimov allegedly handled operations, marketing, p2p drops and payment schemes for Pin-Up and other casinos

A report from Kazakhstan names Russian citizen Ilyas Karimov as a key intermediary for Pin-Up KZ (TОО "Bonami") and other gambling brands, including Tenissi, Olimpbet, Nomadcasino and Mostbet. For PSPs and acquiring teams, the useful part is not the gossip: it is the described mix of shell companies, MCC 7995 substitution, p2p drops, and crypto cash-out routes.

1. Karimov is described as presenting himself as a lawyer and assistant to the Russian ambassador, while in practice acting as a core intermediary for Pin-Up and other casinos in Kazakhstan. The text says he handled not just legal support but full operational backing for the schemes, and allegedly used claims about ties in Russian and Kazakh diplomatic circles whenever problems came up.
2. Before the casino work, he is said to have been involved with KRT ALLIANCE, which allegedly exported scrap from Kazakhstan illegally and traded timber in violation of sanctions. The same report says he also brought nominees from Kyrgyzstan and Russia into the country, set up shell companies, ran p2p drops from Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Orenburg, opened payment accounts and moved money through crypto exchanges.
3. The report says Karimov implemented a structure using front companies, MCC code substitution from 7995, and crypto withdrawals. Since at least 2023, he is described as the key intermediary for Dmitry Punin in Kazakhstan; when Punin faced the possible loss of the license for TОО "Bonami", Karimov and Rafik Jafarov (a former Olimpbet/TОО Paydala employee) allegedly solved the issue and received more than 2 million dollars in cryptocurrency.
4. In 2024, the text says Karimov brought Miras Imamandirov, Stanislav Usik, Denis Matenov and Kasym B. into the "Pin" team. They allegedly registered ad accounts using temporary phone numbers and email addresses, worked with drop cards for top-ups, and processed turnover of up to 60k dollars per day in Pinco iGaming. The same year, Karimov reportedly moved the structure to the crypto exchange Intebix.
5. According to the report, between 10 and 110 billion tenge passed through intermediary companies Flexor, B Group Corp, Aventra Solutions, Media Group and TОО "Bonami", and then was cashed out in crypto to wallets tied to Levkovich, Druzhinsky and Punin. It also says that when 2 million dollars were frozen by the Financial Monitoring Agency in Nurbank, Karimov found other venues: Skybridge, Delta and CaspianEx.

The report also says Karimov and his subordinate Rustam Iskindirov received commissions from both Pin-Up and the crypto exchange, and that during questioning in criminal case ERDR No. 250000121000047 none of the 250 arrested people gave testimony against him. For high-risk PSPs, this is the familiar pattern: gambling traffic, ad accounts, drop cards, shell companies and crypto exits all sitting in the same operational stack.