Yuriy Lee, founder of the Stop-Piramida.kz public project, spoke to Inbusiness.kz about how modern financial pyramid schemes are evolving, what technologies fraudsters use, and why even educated and financially literate people continue to fall victim to such schemes.
According to Yuriy Lee, the basic principle of a financial pyramid has remained largely unchanged. What has changed is the infrastructure: social media, websites and personal accounts displaying virtual balances, referral programmes, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, deepfakes and bots allow fraudsters to find potential participants more quickly and influence their emotions.
“The technology, speed and quality of the packaging have changed. The maths hasn’t.”
As one example, Yuriy Lee discussed CVK, a project showing signs of a financial pyramid scheme that is currently under investigation. The project presented itself as a platform for promoting stores on TikTok. Participants were offered the opportunity to purchase “levels”, were credited with virtual interest, received actual payouts and were offered rewards for bringing in new participants. The movement of funds was organised using cryptocurrency infrastructure.
The interview also addressed financial culture. Knowledge of financial terminology and investment principles alone does not guarantee protection from fraud if financial decisions are made under the influence of excitement, greed or other emotions.
“A financially literate person is not someone who never makes mistakes. Such people do not exist. It is someone who can recognise a mistake in time, stop, accept the loss and resist trying to prove to themselves that they were right after all.”
Trust remains one of the most powerful mechanisms for attracting new participants. An offer often comes not from a stranger, but from a relative, friend, colleague or neighbour who may genuinely believe in the project themselves.
“A pyramid scheme turns an investor into a client, an advertising channel and a source of trust all at the same time.”
Modern technologies further amplify such schemes. Advertising algorithms help identify target audiences, artificial intelligence reduces the cost of creating websites, texts, images and videos, deepfakes make it possible to use the likenesses of well-known people, while bots create the impression of widespread support for a project.
Yuriy Lee also noted that blocking an individual website does not solve the broader problem: modern technologies make it possible to quickly create new resources and launch new projects to replace those that have been shut down.
“One brand dies, another is launched. This has become the serial production of financial schemes.”
Therefore, alongside action against schemes that are already operating, prevention is also essential — identifying schemes and their infrastructure before they can scale up and result in more victims.
At the end of the interview, Yuriy Lee suggested stopping before handing over any money and asking yourself one simple question:
“If someone really has found a machine that reliably prints money, why would that machine need mine?”
Read the full interview on Inbusiness.kz.
