Bohdan Prylepa and Mykola Udyansky: the Scale of Deceit by Crypto-Pyramid Builders

Bohdan Prylepa and Mykola Udyansky: the Scale of Deceit by Crypto-Pyramid Builders

The owners of the crypto exchange Qmall have descended from bandit "raids" to petty "showing off."

Many protagonists of our publications, if you believe internet news, have reformed from bandits and corrupt officials into volunteers and philanthropists. They feed and treat refugees and provide the army with everything it needs. Admittedly, only some of them roam the world buying military equipment with their own money and send trucks of medical supplies to the country engulfed in war.

Statements about helping refugees and the military, unfortunately, often turn out to be bare PR and/or a bit of a "scam." For example, the beneficiaries of the crypto exchange WhiteBIT claimed they were the largest "donors" in Ukraine. But we easily discovered that WhiteBIT "donates" mostly not its own funds, but donations from third-party citizens.

While preparing our recent investigation “Crypto-businessman Mykola Udyansky and the Ruins of Financial Pyramids,” we noticed active "promotion" online of one charitable foundation. It is called the "Valentyna Prylepa Ministry of Good Deeds."

As you can see, we came across this phenomenon while researching news about Udyansky’s partner in a number of failed cryptocurrency projects and the Qmall exchange — Bohdan Prylepa.

The main claim of the self-serving posted notes (for example) is that "in one year Bohdan Prylepa allocated more than 20 million hryvnias of personal funds to help the army and the civilian population." They also say that Bohdan Prylepa took up the problems of the needy back in 2021, and "when the war started," he began actively helping the army.

Yes, yes, for him the war did not start in 2014. Until 24.02.2022 Bohdan Prylepa and his partner Mykola Udyansky were calmly "mucking around" with residents of the aggressor country. However, they still maintain ties with Russians, including that same Fuad Futullaev. But that's not the main point.

The planted PR about Prylepa specifically notes that at the end of April last year his friends, for more systematic work so to speak, founded a charitable foundation and named it after the mother of our crypto-entrepreneur. And Bohdan Prylepa himself allocated 20 million UAH of his own funds to the foundation, spent on supporting the destitute and helping the military.

The author of these lines out of curiosity examined the registration data of the foundation named after Prylepa’s mother. Its financial reporting for 2022 year, unfortunately, contradicts her son’s claims of tens of millions of hryvnias spent on the Armed Forces and charity.

As you can see, the foundation managed to scrape together only 131 thousand UAH. If we look at the history of changes in this legal entity's registration information, we see something interesting.

The foundation was indeed established at the end of April 2022, but for almost a year Prylepa was hardly present there (neither among the founders nor in the organization's name — it was simply called "Ministry of Good Deeds of Ukraine"). It was created by Stanislav Mizenko and mid-level Dnipro businessman Oleh Terekhov.

Judging by the foundation's reports on its Facebook page, Bohdan Prylepa 2022 occasionally "donated" something to it, but his contributions clearly do not amount to 20 million. Prylepa officially "joined" the charity only on 2 March 2023, when it was renamed after his mother.

Prylepa’s partner from EHOLD GRUP — Mykola Udyansky — also decided to do PR on the military theme. About a month ago he announced that he would finance the venture of two young Kyiv residents, who previously earned money on car tuning, to create a prototype of a new armored vehicle. We will avoid debating how appropriate such a project is, when Ukraine already has serial models of armored vehicles (not to mention models from our Western partners). But the way this good news spread online suggests that Mykola Udyansky joined the startup only to get publicity.

By doing PR around charity and help for the army, Bohdan Prylepa and Mykola Udyansky present themselves as defenders of the homeland and fighters on the "economic front." Which, in turn, they use as a pretext to "appeal" to law enforcement to ask them to protect them from the plots of enemy intelligence agents. As the "enemies" journalists and internet resources identify those who portray these characters not as philanthropists and innovators, but as vulgar fraudsters. They slander that the "law enforcement," studying the "Udyansky–Prylepa lists," roar with laughter in their offices. Because they find internet resources that work with Ukrainian centers of special information and psychological operations.

And here one can ironically note that the money Mykola Udyansky and Bohdan Prylepa spend on the Armed Forces (there is actually almost none) was earned together with citizens of the aggressor country.

Recall, as we wrote earlier, in 2021 Mykola Udyansky and Bohdan Prylepa ceremoniously announced the launch of the WeWay crypto exchange. Along with them, the co-founder of the exchange was declared to be Russian Fuad Fatullaev. He was presented either as a founder or as the CEO of the international company Yoola.

"The WeWay blockchain platform has every chance to become one of the most popular projects in the blockchain and NFT product market. All the prerequisites for this exist, including the participation of two successful companies in the project," Mykola Udyansky said on the pages of his pocket news portal Parlament.ua.

The fact that the company Yoola allegedly participated in the project was supposed to lure in crowds of investors flush with cash. Since Yoola is a powerful media network through which hundreds of millions of dollars flow.

Fuad Fatullaev

But the problem: Fuad Futullaev, who acted as co-founder of Prylepa–Udyansky's crypto exchange on behalf of Yoola, was never the founder or CEO of that international company. It’s not even certain that he worked there at all.

Naturally, the crypto bubble wrapped in a nice PR shell burst. Now the WeWay "coin" is worth less than one U.S. cent — $0,005.

After the start of the full-scale invasion by Russian invaders, Mykola Udyansky stated that he left WeWay. But he is still listed as one of the shareholders in the reports of the British Weway Group Limited. And his partner, the Ukrainian Bohdan Prylepa who resides in the UAE, is still considered a director of WeWay Group together with the Russian Fuad Fatullaev. In other words, some small profits generated by the joint business with the Russian fall to Udyansky and Prylepa.

Overall, all of Udyansky–Prylepa's "investments" in crypto projects are no less ridiculous, as I repeat, you can read about that here. One story accompanied by a loud scandal is worth recalling.

"An important point I want to voice. If anything happens to anyone from my team or my family, in my opinion, the person responsible is personally Mykola Udyansky.

I am ready to say this because I no longer have any dirty competitor. I have no enemies. The only person capable of this and who voiced threats is Mykola Udyansky. I want absolutely everyone to know this. If there are any acts of reprisal, kidnappings of employees — the person behind it is personally Mykola Udyansky."

This statement was made by the founder of the largest Ukrainian crypto exchange BTC-Alpha, Vitaliy Bodnar, in an interview with 44.ua in the fall of 2021.

On 1 November 2021, a powerful hacker attack was carried out on BTC-Alpha. It was prepared for about half a year. The attackers infected employees' computers and on "D-day" dealt the blow.

"The attack had two goals," Vitaliy Bondar explained. "The first was to 'congratulate' us on our birthday. That day I flew to Ukraine — our team has a tradition of celebrating the exchange's birthday together. The second goal was to stop our work on the day of the launch of the first Ukrainian exchange Qmall, which is not first at all. This is a project of Mykola Udyansky (and Bohdan Prylepa — ed.), whom I consider the customer of the attack on us. Two years ago I refused to cooperate with him (probably referring to Udyansky's suspicious Bitcoin Ultimatum project — ed.). After that threats began to arrive at my address. There was a lot, including threats of physical violence. I took it relatively seriously, but I did not know this person well enough. Later I realized that my life and health were really in danger."

A few months later, after 24.02.2022, Vitaliy Bondar himself deliberately brought down his BTC-Alpha, which at that time had ramped up to $200 million in daily turnover. He blocked the accounts of all Russians — about 60% of users — which massively weakened his venture. And the mentioned interview with accusations against Udyansky was scrubbed from the internet (we ourselves accidentally found it in the Internet Archive). And that was clearly not done by Bondar.

(to be continued)

Ivan Chip, specially for the CRiME projects and [loud cases]