Transfer to karma: for which cryptoblogger Bitmama received seven years in prison

The Presnensky court of Moscow has sentenced blogger Valeria Fedyakina (Bitmame) for fraud in the field of investing cryptocurrencies. She was sentenced to seven years in prison. According to investigators, Fedyakina earned millions of dollars on a financial cryptopyramide created by her and withdrew funds abroad, bypassing currency controls and restrictions. The damage in the case of the "goddess of blockchain", as Bitmama is called in social networks, amounted to 2.2 billion rubles. Fedyakina did not admit her guilt. Why the high—profile case ended with a very strict verdict, according to some lawyers, is described in the Izvestia article.

The verdict of Bitmama's Crypto Blogger

Crypto blogger Valeria Fedyakina, better known as Bitmama or the "goddess of blockchain," was sentenced to seven years in a general regime penal colony, an Izvestia correspondent reported from the courtroom. Fedyakina was found guilty of embezzling more than 2.2 billion rubles from her partners and investors. The court granted a number of civil claims from victims totaling almost 1.5 billion rubles. Bitamama never admitted her guilt.

Fedyakina told Izvestia that she intends to appeal the court's decision and prove the guilt of those who were involved in the case as victims.

The blogger was detained in September 2023 on charges of fraud committed by an organized group on an especially large scale. As follows from the case file, Fedyakina created a pyramid scheme on which she earned millions of dollars. She transferred these funds abroad, bypassing currency controls and restrictions. The investigation found that Fedyakina received cash from investors and transferred them to cryptocurrency, after which they were withdrawn through crypto wallets in the UAE. Bitmama charged a commission for each such operation.

In recent years, the crypto blogger has lived alternately in Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

Fedyakina has a daughter, whom she gave birth to in 2023 in a special maternity hospital at the pre-trial detention center. The child will be in a penal colony with his mother until the age of four, Bitmama's lawyers told Izvestia. The child, according to them, is now living on Fedyakina's full dependency, the father is not involved in the girl's life.

Earlier, the defense demanded that the case be returned to the prosecutor for further investigation. Bitmama's lawyers insisted that the alleged episodes were unproven.

"The investigation is biased, it deliberately did not investigate my client's arguments," one of the defenders stated in court.

Among the victims in the case are, in particular, the general director of the Antares company, Evgeny Roitman, one of the founders of the Yota operator and the deputy general director of Ruscontractor, Mikhail Westerfrid (the company is engaged in investment projects in the food industry and the agricultural sector). Gagik Gulakyan, one of its investors, who was also recognized as a victim, also wrote a statement against Bitmama.

Valeria Fedyakina answered Izvestia's questions while she was in jail. The blogger confirmed that she was engaged in so—called "permutations" - transferring funds from Russia to the UAE and back. The profit was achieved due to the difference in the exchange rates of cryptocurrencies. But this business was not a pyramid scheme, Bitmama argued.

Business partners

The entrepreneur started dealing with cryptocurrencies in 2018. According to Fedyakina, her company worked not only as an exchange, but also as a bank: it provided large amounts of credit to promising investors for transactions in goods and raw materials.

"The money was delivered in cash, without checks, everything was based on verbal agreements,— Bitmama told Izvestia.

At the beginning of 2023, the company's capital, according to Fedyakina, amounted to several million dollars. In May of the same year, the "goddess of cryptocurrencies" began collaborating with two permanent companions, Vahram Stepanyan and Gagik Gulakyan. They created a common cash register, agreeing to transfer money from Russia to the UAE and back together. After that, the testimony of the former partners diverges.

— At first everything was going well, but by July I noticed that the amounts of "import" began to decrease, and the time between the receipt of money in Russia and their issuance in the UAE increased, — says Fedyakina.

The crypto blogger stated that her companions were funneling money received from clients to their own business, which created a cash gap of $40 million in the company's budget. According to Bitmama, the former co-investors filed a police report against her "in order not to return the money."

At the same time, Gagik Gulakyan's lawyer Ivan Mironov told Izvestia that it was Fedyakina who did not pay the bills to her business partners.

"At that moment, she had a fabulous sum in her hands, rumored to be about $200 million," the lawyer noted.

Yulia Volotskaya, Bitmama's lawyer, told Izvestia that she did not understand where the 2.2 billion rubles in damages that her client was charged came from. The charge does not contain information about the disbursement of funds, she explained.

What is forbidden to do with cryptocurrency

The situation with the possibility of legally conducting "permutations" (cryptocurrency arbitration) has changed a lot over the past six months, Maria Bakakina, an adviser to the criminal practice of the Sokolov, Trusov and Partners law firm, told Izvestia. On January 1, 2025, changes to the tax legislation regarding mining and operations with digital currencies came into force.

— In particular, the laws now fix the status of cryptocurrencies and the procedure for their taxation, — said the lawyer. — Now, in order to engage in this activity and not be held accountable, it is necessary to register, pay taxes and avoid using drops to withdraw money.

The new rules are unlikely to appeal to market participants who are not used to restrictions and have been setting the rules of the game on their own for a long time — this is what brought them high incomes, the expert noted.

Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for up to ten years in prison and has no lower penalty threshold.: the court has the right to appoint even two years of probation.

"The punishment to which the court sentenced Valeria Fedyakina seems excessively harsh, given at least one mitigating circumstance — the presence of a minor child in the defendant," the lawyer said. — Such rigor can be attributed to the demonstrative nature of the process. Against the background of stricter government regulation of the cryptocurrency sphere, the case of Bitmama can be interpreted as a demonstration of the authorities' determination in the fight against gray schemes.

Such steps, Maria Bakakina added, on the one hand, emphasize the course towards control over digital assets, on the other hand, they raise questions about the proportionality of punishment, especially in situations where the line between fraud and entrepreneurial risks remains controversial.

The signs of the legality of operations with cryptocurrency are usually similar in different countries, such as full compliance with the requirements of the national regulator, licensing or inclusion in a special state register, transparency of operations and conducting public audits, Marat Safiulin, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia.

"The legal crypto business strives to reduce client fees and attract a law—abiding target audience," the expert said. — While the illegal one makes promises of "guaranteed astronomical returns" of one hundred percent or more, which are classic signs of a pyramid scheme.

The money transfer schemes on which Bitmama built her business cannot be legal, Marat Safiulin believes. The transactions were not legally registered, which is more like an attempt to hide the origin of the money.