When people are struggling financially and looking for ways to earn money, scammers always show up — taking advantage of their hopes and offering fake promises of quick income.
This was the case in the 1990s with the rise of financial pyramids, the most infamous being Sergey Mavrodi’s MMM. And it’s happening again today, during russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, with promises of quick riches through crypto trading.
Aleksandr Orlovskiy is currently one of the most visible crypto scammers online, luring people with stories of earning thousands of dollars a month by investing just $100.
But, as you might expect, in the end, he’s the only one left with the money — while those who trusted him are left with nothing.
Who is Aleksandr Orlovskiy and How He Uses the Image of Success to Sell His Courses
Aleksandr Orlovskiy gained popularity through a project called Financial Freedom Academy. This “academy” presents itself as the “largest crypto community in Ukraine” and an educational platform where people supposedly learn how to invest in cryptocurrency and profit from crypto trading. Orlovskiy is promoted as the founder of the project and a crypto expert who “earned his first million dollars at the age of 24”.
In one interview, he claimed he was born and raised in Kyiv but moved to Poland at 16, to the small border town of Zgorzelec, after his family faced financial difficulties. He finished high school there, and at 18 moved to Wrocław to attend university. While studying, he worked odd jobs: at a gas station, in a restaurant kitchen, and as a bartender. In most interviews, Orlovskiy shares a story about a life-changing encounter: a Polish customer named Mateusz, who turned out to be a crypto investor, introduced him to the world of cryptocurrency and became his first mentor in crypto trading.
And so, supposedly, the talented crypto trader Aleksandr Orlovskiy was born — who now runs an aggressive PR campaign on social media, branding himself as a successful crypto investor and financial expert. “At 26, I’m living the life many dream of: two brand-new cars, homes in two countries, a high income, and traveling the world. But all this didn’t come from luck — it’s the result of the right mindset and habits,” Orlovskiy writes on his Telegram channel.
He constantly posts photos of himself in designer clothes, expensive watches, in luxury apartments, next to exclusive cars and even private helicopters.
On the FFA website, there are seven different training programs. Six of them require a consultation with a manager, while one, called Discord 2.0, can be purchased directly, either by card or with crypto. Choosing Discord 2.0 redirects you to another website describing the program. In reality, it’s just a private group chat where participants can talk with mentors, supposed experts, and even Orlovskiy himself.
You can subscribe to Discord 2.0 for 1, 3, 6, or 12 months — for $100, $180, $300, or $480 respectively. We selected the $100 crypto option. A window popped up with a QR code and a crypto wallet address. But here’s the catch: every new purchase generates a new wallet address.
After analyzing several of these wallets, we found they were transit wallets — they don’t store funds. Instead, money flows through them and is quickly transferred to exchanges or other wallets controlled by Orlovskiy and his team. This alone looks like a classic cash-out scheme designed to obscure the origin and destination of the funds.
If you choose to pay by card, you’re prompted to enter your payment details and complete the transaction. A screenshot shows the funds are sent to a company that applied for the “FFA (Financial Freedom Academy)” trademark only recently — on January 20, 2025, under application № m202500849 by FFA Group FZE (Dubai). There’s no publicly available information about this company at all.
Just a year ago, people who paid for the courses were told in the offer agreement that payments were to be made to Orlovskiy’s registered sole proprietorship (FOP). But in reality, his managers provided bank details for an entirely different FOP. Legally, this allowed the Academy to avoid refunding payments: once the money was transferred to someone else’s account, the buyer had no legal right to a refund or even to complain, since the transaction wasn’t officially tied to the Academy. The same is true with crypto payments — in court, anonymous wallets carry no legal weight, and no one can prove who received the funds.
“One of my cohorts had 115 people. Each paid $500 — that’s $57,500 from just one stream. And they run these streams one after another. They can easily have 3–4 cohorts per month. Payments go through different FOPs, and they constantly change them to avoid hitting limits. You can imagine how much money that is, and they pay almost no taxes,” a former student of Orlovskiy’s Academy told us.
Notably, Orlovskiy’s own FOP received income only during the first two months after registration, in July and August 2023, during which he immediately received ₴5,537,139 ($142,667). Since September 2023, his FOP has reported no official income.
Instead, his mother Tetiana Orlovska registered her FOP on August 30, 2023 — precisely when her son stopped using his own account to receive payments (likely realizing that this would help avoid refund claims). Her newly registered FOP quickly began receiving tens of thousands of dollars in revenue: in the last four months of 2023, she received ₴4,881,748 ($130,000). In 2024, she reported another ₴5,513,910 ($137,333) in total income.
The FOPs of Lyudmyla Kolomiiets and Iryna Ertel-De-Dessau, also listed on Orlovskiy’s site, earned similar amounts. Kolomiiets, registered in the city of Khmilnyk in Vinnytsia region, received ₴5.5 million in 2023 and ₴5.9 million in 2024. Ertel-De-Dessau, from the city of Bakhmach in Chernihiv region, received ₴4.7 million in 2023 and ₴5.8 million in 2024.
According to Kyrylo Yakovets, head of the NGO “NON-STOP”, Orlovskiy may have made around $4 million through his academy by exploiting the trust of about 15,000 people who gave him money hoping to learn how to earn from crypto.
What Assets Does Aleksandr Orlovskiy’s Family Own?
Perhaps thanks to these earnings, his 18-year-old younger brother Ivan Orlovskiy and their father Oleksandr came to own adjacent high-value land plots near the former presidential residence Mezhyhirya in the village of Novi Petrivtsi, outside Kyiv. One plot measures 1,630 square meters, the other 1,519 square meters and includes a residential home. Properties in that area are valued at upwards of $670,000.
Orlovskiy’s wife, 29-year-old Yuliia Ponomarenko, who lives with him in Warsaw, owns an apartment in the Zoryane Mistechko-2 residential complex in Odesa (prices there start at $80,000), and a commercial unit in another Odesa complex, Assol. According to YouControl, Yuliia also purchased a 2023 Toyota Corolla in March 2025, which typically costs around $29,000. Since she works as an ordinary product manager (according to her social media), it’s likely that her husband is the one paying for all this — along with the many luxurious vacations she posts about on Instagram.
Like Orlovskiy, these mentors with limited crypto trading experience try to portray themselves as wealthy and successful on social media posting photos of luxury cars and trips abroad. Yet none of them own any property or cars in Ukraine — except for Vorobiov, who still holds a flat in Mariupol.
No surprise then that Orlovskiy’s fraudulent activity is now attracting the attention not just of disgruntled students, but also of law enforcement. On November 8, 2023, police in Ternopil opened criminal case №120232110400002635 based on a complaint by local resident Nadiia Kovalishyn. She claimed that unknown individuals, possibly including Aleksandr Orlovskiy, scammed her out of a large sum under the pretense of investing in the “CapitalProf” platform.
Meanwhile, according to the International Organization of Securities Commissions, Orlovskiy’s training programs, FFA Crypto, FFA Crypto RISE, and FFA Crypto Capitalist, have been blacklisted by Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission as suspicious investment schemes. Orlovskiy responded by filing a lawsuit in Kyiv’s Administrative Court, attempting to challenge the Commission’s decision.
How Aleksandr Orlovskiy Cooperates with Russians During the War
In another case, №991/8911/24, filed by the head of NGO “NON-STOP”, Kyrylo Yakovets, with NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Orlovskiy is accused of running a criminal organization that scams crypto investors and allegedly doing so in coordination with the Russian platform VELES.
According to Yakovets’ statement, Orlovskiy and his mentors recruit clients from russia, pay for ads and referral links inside russia, and process payments using russian services — effectively channeling funds into russia’s economy.
Media sources confirm that Orlovskiy actively promotes VELES, a russian crypto platform, through his YouTube videos — encouraging people to register using his referral link, profiting from each sign-up.
Our analysis of the FFA course Discord group also found a channel called “results-crypto”, where students shared screenshots of trades done specifically on VELES. In other words, Orlovskiy is funneling his students onto this russian platform, giving them no real skills, and leaving them to lose money — money that then ends up in the pockets of VELES’ russian owners.
Even more concerning, all users of VELES are handing over their personal data to russia — data that could very likely be accessed by russian intelligence services.
VELES is owned and operated by russian national Vladislav Kriger. The platform, like Orlovskiy’s own projects, has been flagged by Ukrainian regulators as an unreliable investment scheme and may be involved in funding the russian military, according to BlackBox OSINT.
This paints a deeply cynical picture in light of Orlovskiy’s public claims about donating to the Ukrainian army (something he does rarely, judging by his Instagram). Given russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, his actions look not just unpatriotic, but downright treacherous.
In fact, leaked Telegram messages from July 2022 show that Orlovskiy was actively exploring investment opportunities in a russian crypto project called Amazy.
Amazy was developed by russian nationals, including infamous influencer Serhii Kosenko, known for peddling crypto and self-development courses and for launching the Amazy app, a classic pyramid scheme that paid users to walk around in virtual sneakers they had to buy first.
Oleksandr Orlovskiy’s correspondence from summer 2022 with the authors of the russian crypto project Amazy, where he asks about the project’s tokenomics (how the token is used within the project’s ecosystem) and its white paper — a document outlining the project’s goals, technical details, risks, and intended use, aimed at informing potential investors.
So despite russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, Orlovskiy, who makes millions off trusting Ukrainians, had no hesitation or moral barriers when it came to preparing (or possibly already collaborating) with russian crypto projects. Not to mention that his FFA website is available in russian, and his courses are easily accessible to russian citizens.
Screenshots from the website of Aleksandr Orlovskiy’s crypto academy
So, Aleksandr Orlovskiy’s activities may not only be fraudulent, but also anti-Ukrainian — something that law enforcement should investigate. Not to mention the use of crypto wallets to hide income from the state, income earned by deceiving unsuspecting citizens. In this context, one of Orlovskiy’s recent Instagram stories, posted during a conference in London, seems particularly ironic:
Instagram story posted by Aleksandr Orlovskiy
