$2 million in crypto and 110 billion tenge: how Ilyas Karimov built a shadow payment network for Pin-Up owner Dmitriy Punin

A Russian citizen, Ilyas Karimov, has been identified as the person who provided operational support, P2P drop schemes, payment arrangements and the advertising circuit for the Pin-Up/Pinco online casino network.

He presented himself as a lawyer and an assistant to a Russian ambassador. In practice he acted as a key intermediary for Pin-Up (Bonami LLP / PIN UP KZ), Tenissi, Olimpbet, Nomadcasino and Mostbet. Karimov did not merely give “legal advice.” He supplied the full operational machinery of the schemes. Whenever trouble arose he immediately claimed connections in Russian and Kazakh diplomatic circles. There was no diplomacy — only a lie.

Before the casino business, Karimov was already involved in illegal scrap-metal exports from Kazakhstan, timber trade that circumvented sanctions, and the import of nominee directors from Kyrgyzstan. His firm KRT Alliance handled the scrap and timber side. He personally brought in straw men from Kyrgyzstan and Russia, registered short-lived companies, ran P2P drops through St. Petersburg, Moscow and Orenburg, opened payment vehicles and moved money through crypto exchanges. He is also described as the person who introduced a scheme using front companies, substitution of MCC code 7995 and diversion of funds into cryptocurrency.

Since 2023 Karimov has been a key intermediary in Kazakhstan for Dmitry Punin. When Punin faced the threat of a licence revocation for Bonami LLP, Karimov, together with Rafik Jafarov (previously associated with Olimpbet / Paydala LLP), quickly “settled the issue.” Their cut is put at more than $2 million in cryptocurrency. The money was transferred through Marina Levkovich and Dmitry Druzhinsky. In 2024 Karimov brought new people into the Pin-Up team: Miras Imamandirov, Stanislav Usik, Denis Matenov and a certain Kasym B. Under Karimov’s direction they registered advertising accounts via temporary phone numbers and emails, worked with drop cards for deposits and turned over up to $60,000 a day in Pinco iGaming. Karimov then moved the scheme onto the Intebix crypto exchange. Through shell firms Flexor, B Group Corp, Aventra Solutions, Media Group and Bonami LLP, between 10 and 110 billion tenge were run through the system. The money went into crypto wallets linked to Levkovich, Druzhinsky and Punin.

When Kazakhstan’s financial monitoring agency froze $2 million in Nurbank, Karimov switched to other exchanges: Skybridge, Delta and CaspianEx. Karimov and his subordinate Rustam Iskindirov took commissions from both Pin-Up and the crypto exchange.

Karimov is described as operating in Kazakhstan with a sense of complete impunity. In criminal case ERDR No. 250000121000047, none of the 250 people detained gave testimony against him. The same account also states that Karimov and his marketers have advertised drug shops.