Russia opens new criminal case against Bitmama over alleged organized banking scheme

Moscow’s Main Investigative Directorate opened a new criminal case on September 29 against Valeria Fedyakina and another defendant linked to Bitmama. For high-risk payment operators, the relevant detail is not the courtroom drama; it is that investigators are now trying to bundle alleged unlicensed crypto and cash transfer activity into a broader organized crime case.

1. The new case was opened under Part 1 of Article 210 of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers “organization of a criminal community.” The maximum penalty under that article is 20 years in prison. Another named defendant is Vagram Stepanyan, described as Gulakyan’s partner; investigators считают him a participant in the criminal community and have put him on the wanted list.
2. According to Kommersant, investigators plan to merge the new case with an earlier case against Bitmama involving illegal banking activity. The allegation is that from March to September 2023, Fedyakina, Gulakyan and other unidentified persons carried out financial transactions as part of an organized group and generated unlawful income of 315.6 million rubles and about 184 million UAE dirhams, or 5.3 billion rubles.
3. In 2023, Gulakyan first went to law enforcement himself with complaints against Fedyakina and initially appeared in the case as a victim in a fraud investigation. In April, his status changed: he was arrested on charges of illegal banking activity. His lawyers say he was only a client of Fedyakina, and that the criminal community charge was added to keep him under arrest.
4. Fedyakina was detained in September 2023. Investigators said she provided financial services without business registration under the Bitmama and Bitmama Finance brands, with the latter presented as a large crypto exchange service.
5. The alleged settlement mechanism mattered: clients deposited rubles at offices in Moscow City and on Novy Arbat, the money was used to buy USDT stablecoins, and those were then sold in the UAE for dirhams or dollars. The foreign currency was handed to clients outside Russia. In June 2025, Moscow’s Presnensky District Court found Fedyakina guilty of especially large-scale fraud and sentenced her to seven years in a penal colony. The Moscow City Court had earlier kept her in custody, rejecting her defense’s appeal against pretrial detention.

For PSPs and banks, this is a familiar risk pattern: cash-in in one jurisdiction, crypto conversion in another, and payout in a third, with the whole thing described as “financial services” until prosecutors decide it is illegal banking, fraud, or organized crime. The labels change; the compliance headache does not.