Dmitro Druzhynskyi and Marina Levkovych: Where did they escape to and who stands behind them?

Dmitro Druzhynskyi and Marina Levkovych: where did they run off to and who stands behind them?

The story of Dmitro Druzhynskyi and Marina Levkovych is not just another plot about online casinos, crypto, and payment services. It is almost a ready-made detective series: international warrants, a billion dollars, dozens of searches, a bookmaker license as a smokescreen, an American passport, Ukrainian origin, Russian connections, and extremely tense attempts to clean up the internet.

Kazakh investigators claim that through infrastructure tied to the Pin-Up and Pinco brands, huge sums were laundered from the country under the guise of legal bookmaker activity. At the center of the scheme are US citizen Dmitro Druzhynskyi and Ukrainian citizen Marina Levkovych (Ginzburg), who were declared international wanted persons at the beginning of the year.

But the most interesting thing in this story is not the amount of money. It is how former post-Soviet gaming industry insiders, crypto processing, offshore structures, Ukrainian and Russian connections, and the traditional magic of these schemes — 'we didn’t organize anything; we just provided a service' — intertwined around online betting.

A significant portion of publications about the case come from either Kazakh official releases or from so-called leaks and investigative sites. Therefore, part of the information requires cautious handling and has not yet been confirmed by court decisions, and it is quite difficult to form a roughly accurate picture.

Why Kazakhstan?

The official part of the story was voiced by the Kazakh Financial Monitoring Agency (AFM). According to the investigation, under the guise of a legal bookmaker business, there operated a network of illegal online casinos connected with the Pin-Up and Pinco brands.

A key element of the scheme, according to investigators, was LLC Bonami, which obtained an official bookmaker license in Kazakhstan. Formally — a legal betting market. In reality, as AFM believes, an infrastructure for online gambling servicing and moving money outside the country.

The investigation states that customers' money was initially accumulated on transit accounts, then passed through payment companies Gold Pay and Cyber Pay (later renamed Pinnacle Financial Solutions), and then converted into cryptocurrency. According to Kazakh law enforcement, more than a billion dollars could have been moved through this system. In January 2026 Druzhynskyi and Levkovych were declared internationally wanted, and later a court authorized their extradition.

Kazakhstan has long been one of the key markets for post-Soviet gaming business. After regulatory tightening, Kazakhstan turned out to be a convenient platform: relatively liberal market, active development of electronic payments, high interest in online betting, and the possibility of operating through a network of intermediaries.

According to Kazakh media and investigative publications, Druzhynskyi and Levkovych were engaged in organizing the payment infrastructure — that is, not so much the casinos themselves, but the most important element of any gaming business: moving money. And this is the level of financial coordinators, not just 'IT guys'.

Judging by open publications, Marina Levkovych also appeared under the surname Ginzburg. Dmitro Druzhynskyi is mentioned in several publications as a US citizen of Ukrainian descent. Some materials suggest he may have been involved in illicit gambling stories even before the Kazakh case. However, these data require additional confirmation.

How the scheme worked: murky traces.

Another interesting point: the entire structure looked not like a classic casino, but like a hybrid of fintech, a crypto exchange, and a payment gateway. That is why investigators pay attention not only to the bookmaker but also to financial intermediaries.

If you gather together AFM official statements and investigative publications, the scheme looked roughly as follows: a user deposited money through a formally legal bookmaker infrastructure. After that, funds passed through a chain of payment companies, with the purpose of payments masked as legitimate operations. Then the money was fragmented and routed through cryptocurrency channels. Then the funds were moved outside Kazakhstan.

It was at the processing stage that structures like Gold Pay, Cyber Pay, and Pinnacle Financial Solutions arose. For a classic illegal casino, this is almost an ideal model: formally you have a license and a payment service, but in reality — an international money-moving machine.

This is where the murkiest part of the story begins. There is no publicly confirmed direct evidence that the scheme was managed from Russia or by Russian structures. However, several factors force a careful look in that direction.

Firstly, the Pin-Up brand itself has long operated in the markets of the former USSR and is traditionally associated with the Russian-speaking segment of gambling.

Secondly, such high-risk processing schemes historically were built through a network of companies connected with Russian and offshore markets simultaneously. After 2022 year, a significant portion of such structures began to actively migrate to Kazakhstan, Armenia, Cyprus, the UAE, and other jurisdictions.

Thirdly, in publications of several investigative outlets there are hints of connections between certain participants in the scheme and influential figures from the financial-political environment of Russia, who in the last five years have been most actively pressuring Kazakhstan. And the logic of the business itself shows: without a serious political and banking 'roof', such operations of a billion dollars cannot exist.

Because this is not an underground basement casino. These are transactions through banks, licensed payment structures, cryptocurrency exchanges, international transfers, and mass advertising infrastructure. Such schemes usually live as long as someone at the top benefits from pretending nothing unusual is happening.

The Ukrainian track in this story looks no less sensitive, though overall it also leads to Russia. After Ukraine legalized gaming, it became one of the largest online betting markets in the region. Around it quickly grew an industry of payment services, affiliated networks, and marketing agencies. Even at the time of adopting the relevant law in Ukraine there were many publications claiming that Russians would push this decision, needing a legal platform, and that they had the capital and influence over the Ukrainian authorities.

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that Pin-Up's work in Ukraine caused a huge scandal, as it turned out that the brand is closely connected with the Russian Federation. In light of this scandal and during the full-scale war, some market players, including Pin-Up, began relocating operations to safer jurisdictions — primarily Kazakhstan and the UAE.

That is why Ukrainian surnames, managers, and companies associated with former participants of the local gambling market frequently appear in investigative materials. The problem is that the gambling business in the post-Soviet space has long existed as a single ecosystem without clear national borders. Today a payment operator may be registered in Almaty, owners live in Dubai, development is in Kyiv, marketing goes through Cyprus, and money passes through crypto and ends up nowhere.

Druzhynskyi and Levkovych — who stands behind them?

Regarding the protagonists of the scandal — Dmitro Druzhynskyi and Marina Levkovych — there is another intriguing question: where did they disappear to? And the exact answer to this question remains unknown. Kazakhstan declared both internationally wanted, but there is no information about their detention.

Investigative publications speculate that the defendants could have left Kazakhstan long before the active phase of the investigation and moved to a jurisdiction traditionally popular among gambling structures — the UAE, Cyprus, or Eastern European countries.

There is another important nuance in the search for Druzhynskyi and Levkovych — in recent weeks several sites wrote about attempts to mass-delete publications about their case from search results and public access.

This fact alone does not prove anything. But in the world of gray gambling, it is considered almost a mandatory crisis management procedure. First, a flood of publications is launched. Then a flood of deletions begins. Then new companies and new brands appear. And very often the same people continue to operate — just under a different name.

One could suppose that Dmitro Druzhynskyi and Marina Levkovych will weather the storm and obtain guarantees that the case will be dropped. But for this to happen, the scandal must subside and publications about their involvement in the scheme must disappear. From this follow two conclusions: there is indeed someone very influential behind the pair, and the services of Druzhynskyi and Levkovych urgently needed this person or these people.

Therefore the main question of this story is not Druzhynskyi and Levkovych. People of that level are usually not the ultimate beneficiaries; they are operators: they build infrastructure, arrange with banks, ensure processing, solve licensing issues.

And the billion-dollar flows they control never belong solely to managers. That is why the Pin-Up case in Kazakhstan looks so sensitive. If the investigation really reaches the ultimate beneficiaries, we may be talking not about a local criminal case, but about a transnational network involving financial, cryptocurrency, and gambling business actors from several countries.

Most investigators name the owner of Pin-Up, Dmitro Punin, as the scheme's beneficiary, but is that really so? The thing is that there were many investigations at one time claiming that influential figures from both Russia and Ukraine stood behind Punin. So there is no answer to who is the true beneficiary of the scheme.

So far, the public picture looks as follows: Kazakh authorities are showing a firm reaction. The defendants are on the wanted list. Information about the case continues to appear in waves. Investigative outlets and dubious-reputation platforms are actively working around the topic. In parallel, there is a mass cleanup of negative coverage about Druzhynskyi and Levkovych.

And this usually means one thing: the fight is not only in courts but also behind the scenes of justice and the public process. How this will end is unclear. On the one hand, mass cleanup campaigns face another equally large one — anew articles appear in place of deleted ones with new details. And this means that besides the forces behind Druzhynskyi and Levkovych, there are others opposing them.

In general, the story of Dmitro Druzhynskyi and Marina Levkovych is a very modern post-Soviet plot. There are no suitcases of cash and clandestine hotels casinos like in the nineties.

There is crypto. There are payment gateways. There is a bookmaker license as an official façade. There is an international network of companies. There are people with ties to multiple jurisdictions and passports. And there is enormous money that disappears faster than court decisions appear.

And there is one main question that remains unanswered: who was the true owner of this system. In such stories the organizers of processing are rarely the final links.