10-15 years ago, Internet scammers were sending letters about an African uncle who left you a huge money bequest and in order to receive it, you only need to pay a few hundred dollars in taxes to the sender’s card. This scheme of luring money from gullible people worked not only in Ukraine.
But many years later, it was the Ukrainians who decided to modernize it and, under the guise of investing in cryptocurrency supposedly backed by African gold, continue to rob people. The startup was invented by Kharkiv resident Yuriy Mochony and his friends.
In the material below, read the fantastic story of a modern scam, the inventors of which did not suffer any punishment.
September 2017. The regional television channel Channel 7 features unknown pseudo-entrepreneurs Dmitry Konoval and Yuri Mochony.
The presenters make a loud announcement - these young Ukrainians have come up with the world's first cryptocurrency, which will be tied to gold and backed by it. This will make their coins stand out from other cryptocurrencies, because each investor will supposedly be able to personally control how his fortune grows.
Kharkov resident Yuriy Mochony, whom TV presenters called the co-founder of the startup Sudan Gold Coin, tells viewers about the essence of the project. According to him, he and his business partners signed an agreement with a Chinese company to supply equipment to gold-bearing areas in Sudan. In this African country, through the mediation of Sudanese officials, it is planned to mine gold to ensure the existence of their cryptocurrency.
But there is a nuance, says Mochony. Before the African plant can operate, he needs to sell about 500,000 coins at 50 cents each and raise startup capital. At the same time, the cunning businessman does not hide the fact that the potentially collected 250 thousand dollars will be spent on paying marketers who will promote the project. And only after this can gold mining in Sudan begin.
At the same time, Yuri Mochony and his comrades are creating a website for the Sudan Gold Coin project and quickly promoting an Instagram page with purchased likes and comments. On social networks, pseudo-businessmen share details of their trip to Sudan and negotiations with potential African partners. Everything looks a little childish, but photographs against the backdrop of government buildings in Khartoum and with unknown people add pathos to the project.
“...The core team went to a meeting with the Minister of Mining of Sudan, Abdelbagi Gailani Ahmed Ali. True, a former minister, who has now founded his own consulting company and continues to work in the field related to mining, but as a businessman,” Ukrainian scammers wrote in October 2017.
The story is increasingly beginning to resemble a scam about an African uncle with a multimillion-dollar will. After all, Mochony apparently met with a minister, but with a former one, who is now just a businessman. It is this person who should help the Ukrainians launch a gold mining plant in Sudan.
Photos of Ukrainians visiting gold-bearing Sudanese areas frankly look like an excursion trip of ordinary tourists to exotic places. But the Sudan Gold Coin project page continued to be active. One of the startup’s co-founders spent 2018 traveling around the world from Singapore to Korea, talking about the “revolution in the crypto industry.” And at the end of 2018, the project’s social networks stopped updating.
On January 19, 2020, a message appeared on the Sudan Gold Coin Facebook page that the project had failed, but its developers continued to look for investors and like-minded people. That is, Mochony and the company admitted that they deceived investors, but they are not going to stop there.
What actually happened? Kharkiv resident Yuriy Mochony and his friends have been scamming people out of money for two years, telling tales about gold mining in Sudan, which will be used to provide cryptocurrency. On the wave of crypto-hype, gullible investors bought these coins. It is not known for certain exactly how much money Mochony and his comrades could raise, but they definitely had enough to travel to exotic countries.
Now the official page of the Sudan Gold Coin project is decorated with a warning message from a Swiss company, which the businessmen apparently also managed to defraud. The Swiss write that in fact, “the distributors of Sudan Gold Coin (SGC) are not associated with the government of Sudan and its various ministries, nor with the Swiss financial regulatory authorities, nor with Netarc AG. “...Due to the exposure of the fraudulent scheme for collecting and misusing funds through the ICO and the further unethical behavior of its promoters with investors and partners, we were forced to officially sever ties and file a lawsuit against the promoters of SGC,” Netarc AG reports.
It was not possible to find out how the judicial red tape ended and whether it ended at all. But, apparently, Yuri Mochony and his comrades were not punished for the fraudulent scheme. Moreover, in the fall of 2020, the businessman managed to run for the Kharkov Regional Council from the now banned “Opposition Platform - For Life”, the godfather of the Russian dictator Putin.
The “CHESTNO” movement, which has been monitoring elections for many years, reports that Mochony in 2023 contacted the “Polythab” team with a request to remove information about the election and offered to “donate” for it. He argued that the CEC data was erroneous. However, after verification, his candidacy was confirmed and activists regarded Mochony’s actions as an attempt at bribery.
In December 2023, “gold miner” and connoisseur of the “Russian world” Yuri Mochony registered the company “Aviatekhnologiya”. The scope of activity of the LLC is very diverse - from non-specialized wholesale trade to engineering and production of instruments and equipment for measurement, research and navigation. The company has an authorized capital of 1 million hryvnia, but no information about its activities could be found. It is likely that this million may be the remainder of the money that Mocheny earned for cryptocurrency coins backed by illusory Sudanese gold.
At first glance, the story of the “success” of Kharkov resident Yuri Mochony may seem rather petty and even comical. But in fact, the copycat senders of letters about the will of an African uncle once again reminded that you need to invest your money wisely. Tales about African gold, of course, can be interesting, but there is as much truth in them as in the stories of workers of fraudulent call centers.
