Escada Business School

History

2024: Sentence to company creators - up to 7 years in prison for embezzlement of ₽55 million

On November 1, 2024, it became known that the Kuibyshevsky District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced four members of a criminal group who stole ₽55 million from 45 citizens under the pretext of investing in shares and cryptocurrencies. The organizers of the scheme received sentences ranging from three to seven years in prison.

According to RBC, the defendants Robert Aloyan, Revaz Burduli, Hakob Tovmasyan and Nikolai Volokitin pleaded guilty to fraud committed by an organized group on a large scale under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

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Freepik

The criminal scheme operated from January 2019 to April 2020 through Escada Business School LLC. About 40 managers worked in the company's call center, who called potential customers on the databases of job search sites.

The official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Irina Volk said that fraudsters invited victims to rented offices in the city center, where they convinced of the safety and profitability of investments. If the clients did not have the necessary funds, they were offered assistance in obtaining loans through controlled microfinance organizations.

The attackers also imposed paid rates on the victims and offered to make large deposits on their own brokerage platform Vizavi. The funds received were used for personal needs and the opening of new offices in the Yaroslavl and Moscow regions.

According to the court decision, Robert Aloyan and Revaz Burduli were sentenced to seven years in prison each, Hakob Tovmasyan received six years and eleven months in prison. Nikolai Volokitin was sentenced to a suspended sentence of three years.

At the time of the arrest of the organizers in the spring of 2020, law enforcement agencies assumed that the total amount of stolen funds could exceed ₽100 million.^[1]

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