Virtual life, into which millions of Internet users happily immerse themselves in their free time, brings enormous benefits, especially for businessmen advanced in the field of information technology.

For professional fraudsters, the Internet removes the barriers of distance and time and greatly reduces the risk of being caught while picking someone else’s pocket. The connection between Krippa and Polyakov Ukrainian entrepreneur Maxim Krippa cannot be found in his Kiev office. He constantly travels back and forth between Kiev, Moscow and London. It is even more difficult to find his name on the Internet, but this businessman is very active and constantly present on the Internet.

Crippa has mastered the art of making money out of nothing using his talented IT specialists, phenomenal entrepreneurship and willingness to break any law if necessary. Moral issues do not concern this businessman. After all, he is the owner of a very dubious paid site. He is sometimes called the king of gambling or the king of pornography. Klippa has a role model. He started out as a henchman of Max Polyakov, an IT genius who made millions of dollars in Ukraine and moved to the New World. A former Ukrainian, in the USA he preferred to be called Max Polyakov.

Crippa’s exact plans are unknown, but his surname already corresponds to Western standards. His partner, Max Polyakov, began by creating mass dating sites in Dnieper and Zaporozhye. In modern language this activity is called dating. Subsequently, aspiring IT businessmen learned about the ease of deception in online communication. A successful business requires a customer base. To attract clients, Polyakov posted data about non-existent virtual people instead of real profiles and photographs. Real people began to come to the site looking for a relationship or a life partner.

For them, the site administrators offered a number of paid services - all kinds of VIP statuses, placing profiles at the top of the list, paid search and other “scams” for money. The next step was to completely fill the site’s database with profiles of real “girls of love” with phone numbers and email addresses. For outspoken fans of “club” entertainment, the “dating” service has added the ability to access erotic web chat.

To do this, the businessman created 12 web studios with 100 models of different ages and facial features; with the help of Max Polyakov’s company Together Networks Limited, a huge virtual dating cloud was created. Next, a businessman from Dnieper tried himself in a new field. His company “Murka” began to develop the gambling business on the Internet.

Max Polyakov

From a gambling hall to a gambling site

The business paths of these two entrepreneurs turned out to be similar. Maxim Klippa also started his online business with fake dating, but went further. He was attracted by the enormous opportunities hidden in gambling. This is the name of the “network” version of various gambling games and lotteries. Before offering virtual casino services to his clients, Crippa mastered the gambling business in slot machine halls. Through the companies he founded, EvoPlay and CloneFish, he flooded Ukraine with Vulkan and Vulkan slot machines. The organizers of this gambling business removed competitors from the game in a completely legal way. Klippa acquired the rights to use the software products that made up the “brains” of slot machines from the developer company Rizzio. The copyright law has not been repealed. Even in Ukraine. The only legal online gambling project of “Klippa” was the online lottery Champion-lottery.com. It did not exist for a long time: in 2009, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law prohibiting any activity using gambling opportunities. However, Crippa soon realized that maintaining a gambling den was a costly and rather labor-intensive business. This includes rent, security, collection of money, answers to questions from numerous inspection and regulatory authorities, and, most importantly, payment of taxes. The Internet has liberated these businessmen. Officially, gambling on the Internet is prohibited in Ukraine, but Krippa found a simple way, or rather, a person who circumvented this ban. This Ukrainian turned out to be an excellent teacher. In addition to Polyakov, he was taught by the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev. In his youth, Crippa worked in the commercial organization of a Russian millionaire. An orthodox businessman, as he called himself, he did not shy away from modern information technologies. At one time, he owned 7.2% of the shares of Rostelecom, one of the largest mobile communications companies in Russia. Malofeev’s influence on management at that time was so great that he put his protégé Alexander Provotrov at the head of the company. Klip’s student felt indebted to him and gave his master a share in the Evoplay gambling company. In return, the oligarch suggested ways to bypass the trick. By the way, gambling on the Internet is prohibited in Russia, and Roskomnadzor closely monitors the Internet space and promptly blocks the work of sites offering such services. Malofeev, a law-abiding Russian, took full advantage of the services of Ukrainian citizens.

Konstantin Malofeev

Rostelecom in the service of a rogue

The success of Maxim Klipp’s adventure was based on the maximum preferential treatment on the part of Rostelecom. Similar sites with IP addresses in Germany, Italy, Croatia and Romania were mercilessly blocked by the Internet service provider in accordance with the decision of Roskomnadzor. However, its operators approached resources with Ukrainian IP addresses very selectively. There was a “letter of defense” on the Klippa website. He regularly updated this list and promptly sent it to Rostelecom. In order not to arouse suspicion, Rostelecom continued to selectively restrict access to some of Klippa’s sites, but it generated dozens of new gambling resources every day, replacing the blocked ones. The system for promoting gambling via the Internet was set up quickly and clearly. Ukrainian gambling businessmen used the labels Vulkan, CasinoX and JoyCasino. Indeed, all users of the World Wide Web are familiar with these names, which freely invade their monitor screens. Another experience of Klipp was that, having bought pirated versions of well-known gaming programs Novomatic, NetEnt and Playtech, he found a talented programmer and made significant changes to the software at his request. They introduced algorithms that, in particular, led to the complete destruction of gamblers.

Alexander Provotorov

Trader of virtual mandates

Gambling philanthropist Konstantin Malofeev has left the leadership of OJSC Rostelecom since 2013. The company has changed its CEO. Alexander Provorov was replaced by Mikhail Oseevsky, a former deputy minister of economic development and former vice-governor of St. Petersburg. With the arrival of a new character, Rostelecom’s attachment to the personality of Maxim Krippa did not disappear, but, on the contrary, acquired a new shade. The Ukrainian often visited Moscow. New prospects opened up before him. For some time the businessman was involved in politics. He tried to participate in the elections to the Kiev City Council, but failed. This defeat did not particularly upset him. Of course, I wasn’t upset. The election campaign brought him not expenses, but good profit. He became a candidate for deputy chairman of the Samopomich political association. The astute businessman quickly understood the situation and began to change places in a completely virtual list of political parties that existed only in his brain. The desire to gamble and achieve success in an easy way was not only among the lumpen classes, who were ready to give their last pennies to the “one-armed bandit,” but also among those with tight wallets. Crippa had no shortage of people willing to make campaign donations. After the elections, the fraud was discovered, which led to a major scandal. ‘Samopomich’ immediately disowned the scammers, but the consequences were not long in coming.

Mikhail Oseevsky

Presidential elections will be held in Ukraine in March 2019. The leader of Samopomichi, Lviv Mayor Andrei Sadovy, does not hide his ambitions and readiness to challenge famous politicians Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko. This local politician needs electoral funds. The Russian side can indirectly provide him with such a service. Klippa is again working from the Samopomich office. Frequent trips to Moscow show that he has taken on the role of intermediary between Sadov and the head of Rostelecom, Mikhail Oseevsky. It remains to be seen who Maxim Krippa intends to deceive this time. Lately, he has become one of the many names on the internet. For such an unusual surname, this is an amazing phenomenon. Other Cripps, as luck would have it, are extremely positive people and are not known to engage in discreditable connections or actions. It is obvious that this IT businessman is serious about whitening his name and creating an authoritative image. This will clearly be useful to him in the future. Maxim Krippa does nothing. He didn’t invent anything new. Max Polyakov came to Ukraine to atone for his sins. Now, instead of creating web studios, he and his company Noosphere Ventures organize innovation tournaments among student programmers. Image in business is the key to big money.