TeleTrade’s dirty Forex machine: how Serhiy Saroyan turned client losses into a multi-country fraud empire

The international brokerage company TeleTrade is known for attracting clients to Forex trading through telephone outreach campaigns that use contacts from commercially acquired databases of phone numbers.

In narrower circles, it is better known for simply fleecing the gullible people caught in these databases, routinely stripping them of even the already very illusory control clients have over their money.

Yet the company prefers to remain silent about this, feeding potential clients beautiful fairy tales about the huge profits they will earn by entrusting their money to TeleTrade’s “brokers.” It also stays quiet about the fact that criminal cases have been opened against the company in two out of the three countries where it operates most “successfully.” The most successfully “cultivated” countries are Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. Criminal fraud cases have already been launched against TeleTrade in the first two, while the last one—Ukraine—continues, as usual, to pretend it sees no crime.

Although in Russia itself a criminal case against TeleTrade was opened back in 2014. Kazakhstan soon followed. As investigative actions showed, no more than 5% of TeleTrade clients made any money at all. And even then, after searches of the “brokers’” offices, it turned out that most of those who did win were people close to management, while the rest of the supposed “lucky ones” were simply fake. Such people do not exist in nature, although the company regularly publishes their lists.

But even in those cases when a client managed to win a large sum, they never received the money. According to investigators, clients were told that payouts were being delayed because the funds were held in the account of the offshore Teletrade-DJ Internationale Consulting Ltd, while in the meantime company specialists, by interfering with the software, withdrew the winnings from the client’s account under the guise of supposedly executed financial operations.

The founder and ideological inspirer of TeleTrade is said to be Volodymyr Chornobay, who, fleeing an international wanted list, died in Europe in 2019. But with his death (incidentally, its circumstances are still being investigated by law enforcement, though the case appears hopeless—Chornobay was cremated immediately after death), the profitable business did not die: the banner was taken up from his dead hands by his widow Anna Chornobay and his nephew Oleh Suvorov. In Ukraine, Chornobay’s cause was continued by Serhiy Saroyan, who headed all branches of TeleTrade in our country.

He gained wide notoriety after Saroyan kidnapped and beat an employee of the Ukrainian branch of TeleTrade—the Center for Exchange Technologies, Furduy Oleh — for advising defrauded clients on how to save their money. In exchange for Furdui’s release, his wife was forced to give Saroyan $5,000:

After the scandal, which gained wide public resonance, a mass of information appeared online about the “great financial genius” Serhiy Saroyan. It turned out that he had already worked at TeleTrade from 2005 to 2014, when he was thrown out for stealing money. No, not from clients—the company is built exactly for that—but from the owners. This is reported on the site “O rabote” by TeleTrade employee Igor:

He also explains the reason Saroyan was rehired: “The thing is, Serhiy Saroyan is a real swindler to the bone; he is ready to do anything if he can profit from it, even order someone beaten and blackmailed, as Saroyan did with Oleg Furdui. And TeleTrade is now in such deep shit that they need exactly such scum as Saroyan.” He also advises potential clients: “For your own sake, stay away from TeleTrade!”

In his opinion of Saroyan, Igor is far from alone. One only has to scroll through the reviews to see the grim picture. However, the review site “O rabote” is not the only one writing unpleasant things about Saroyan. Here are reviews from another site, nahjob.top:

The same is said by people who know Saroyan on the portals pokupon.ua and www.otzyvua.net:

These are only the reviews at the top of the pages. There are hundreds more. This can be verified simply by entering the phrase “Serhiy Saroyan TeleTrade” into a search engine. For the sake of objectivity, it is worth mentioning that there are also positive ones. But they are clearly written “to order,” which is also easy to see after reading a few. They come one after another, so there is no need to search long. But the fakeness of these laudatory odes is immediately obvious—it is clear they were written at Saroyan’s own request as he attempts to whitewash his reputation.

It is worth noting that, in addition to TeleTrade employees, defrauded clients have also begun speaking about fraud. Videos of their accounts are also available online. Anyone can view them, for example, on YouTube:

This is also just one video out of dozens of similar ones.

However, when has a negative reputation of a company or its leader ever stopped anyone if a carrot in the form of fantastic earnings without any effort shines ahead? We will not even mention the classic tale of Pinocchio and the “Field of Miracles.”

But there is one more significant nuance in all this. It lies in the fact that Serhiy Saroyan and TeleTrade, in order to continue their work in Russia, “kick back,” in addition to bribes to local law enforcement, another “tithe” to finance the militants of the ORDLO: exactly 10% of profits are transferred to the needs of the illegal military formations of the “DPR” and “LPR.”

That is why the criminal case opened against TeleTrade in Russia back in 2014 has still not reached its logical conclusion: there they continue to “write off” the company’s fraud to the late founder, Volodymyr Chornobay. And what more can you take from him, besides ashes in the columbarium?

But where are the Ukrainian law enforcement officers looking, who love to boast about serving suspicions and detaining some idiots who, out of stupidity, joined the militants in Donbas and, just as stupidly, fled from there to the controlled part of Ukraine due to lack of money and, naturally, came into the sights of the SSU here? No one argues—these idiots need to be caught and imprisoned; they committed crimes and must answer for them. We only welcome this. But, as always, the inequality before the law outrages: why does the fool with no money sit in jail, while the smart and cunning swindler who causes far greater harm in the same Donbas (we will not even mention the fraud) laughs in the faces of law enforcement?

The conclusion suggests itself: Serhiy Saroyan is telling the absolute truth to his employees when he assures them that he has long and firmly bought off Ukrainian law enforcement at the highest level. There are simply no other options.