Behind the millionaire mask: how PrivatBank debtor Aleksandr Orlovskiy launders money through his mother’s accounts and promotes the Russian Veles
19:32, 18 февраля 2026 г.
The so-called “cryptocurrency guru” Aleksandr Orlovskiy presents himself in a way that combines the flair of a revolutionary slogan about total control with the tone of a satirical novel. His stories reveal grotesque echoes of the fictional millionaire Koreiko and the adventurous, self-assured, and theatrical style of Ostap Bender.
Although the latter preferred to “take down” underground millionaires, Aleksandr Orlovskiy mingles with penniless dreamers chasing astronomical profits from cryptocurrencies. No millionaire — underground or legitimate — would buy into what Orlovskiy claims about himself and his “trader training courses.” It’s all too simplistic and transparently fabricated.
Judge for yourself. In his image-driven interviews and promotional biographies, Aleksandr Orlovskiy tells a primitive story about how he went from being a bartender or taxi driver (different versions exist) to a “self-made millionaire” who mastered the secrets of crypto and trading. In reality, Orlovskiy’s story is a typical tale of an info-scammer who became a “trading teacher.”
According to numerous promotional biographies, Aleksandr Orlovskiy started his career modestly and even touchingly. In various versions, he appears as a taxi driver, a barista, or a general laborer who moved abroad at a young age — Poland is most often mentioned.
The story is presented as a classic motivational-book plot: poor boy, first hundred dollars, first losses, mistakes, “mentor,” enlightenment — and now yesterday’s bartender-laborer confidently strides toward financial freedom.
In truth, beyond the marketing texts, this story has no verification. There are no traces of a real trading career, no recorded successful deals, no data on work in investment firms. There are only words. Lots of words. And pretty pictures.
To be fair, the images and stories of Aleksandr Orlovskiy allow him to earn well from those eager to learn the secrets of trading. But “teaching trading” and “being a trader” are quite different. Aleksandr Orlovskiy was never a trader. Or rather — after several failed attempts, listening to other so-called “gurus,” he quickly realized how to make money in the crypto world: stop the nonsense and build a myth around yourself as a “successful trader.” Then people start flocking to you.
Remove the advertising gloss, and a simple picture emerges: his transition from barista and taxi driver to trader failed. Trading is complex, risky, and statistically unprofitable for most people. Orlovskiy chose a far more lucrative path: selling training in something he never mastered. That’s how the “cryptoguru” Aleksandr Orlovskiy appeared in the info-space.
Learning from the experience of other info-scammers like himself, Aleksandr Orlovskiy founded the Financial Freedom Academy (FFA). The name sounds impressive, English-language, evoking the right associations: freedom, money, success. FFA sells courses to novices on how to “earn a thousand dollars in a week without investment.” Students flock to the “academy” in droves.
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Yet none of these aspiring “traders” bother to check a basic fact: to whom they are paying money. The problem, as a basic check shows, is that no legal entity with this name exists — neither in Ukraine, Poland, nor the UAE, where Orlovskiy allegedly resides.
FFA exists solely as a signboard and marketing shell. Real contracts for purchasing courses are concluded with Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Orlovskiy, an individual entrepreneur registered in Kyiv, Pechersk — which hardly matches the legend of a “provincial boy from the hinterlands.”
The course price is modest — about a thousand dollars. Though it supposedly promised “without investment.” But what is a thousand dollars if it pays off in a week? How one can earn on a market where you have to buy assets “without investment,” Orlovskiy does not explain. Apparently, this knowledge is reserved for the crypto-guru.
It gets even more interesting during payment. According to documents and a course purchase experiment, money is not received directly by Orlovskiy but through third parties, including accounts registered to his mother and other unrelated people, not the course’s individual entrepreneur. Why such a scheme? The answer is obvious: to dilute responsibility, complicate refunds, and avoid direct claims. Such “proxies” are a classic sign of info-scam schemes.
One product is a subscription to a private Discord 2.0 group for $100–$480. During payment, a new crypto wallet is generated through which funds are routed, then transferred to other wallets or exchanges controlled by Orlovskiy and his team — a typical scheme to conceal the source and movement of funds.
Available data shows that through four individual entrepreneurs, payments from course buyers in 2023–2024 totaled nearly $1,000,000. The overall earnings of this project may reach approximately $4,000,000, with a total of 15,000 clients.
Aleksandr Orlovskiy does not shy away from “small stuff” either. According to case No. 757/460/24-ts, reviewed by the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv, Orlovskiy sells not only crypto courses but also courses on “paid game testing” for 3,750 hryvnias. Payment again goes to third-party accounts. How many people purchased this “testing” is unknown.
The glamorous image of Aleksandr Orlovskiy swapping supercars, riding helicopters, and flaunting a rich lifestyle dims somewhat after the fact that at the end of 2022, PrivatBank filed a lawsuit against Orlovskiy over a consumer loan, casting doubt on his claims of early million-dollar success.
Yet who among his students bothers to check court registers? There, their teacher’s name appears not only as a debtor on a loan but also as a suspect in a fraud case No. 120232110400002635, initiated by the Ternopil police at the complaint of local resident Nadiya Kovalishyn, who claims that Aleksandr Orlovskiy and others deceived her under the pretext of investing in the CapitalProf platform — “to obtain money under the guise of profitable investments.”
The case is still under investigation. But this is not an isolated incident — Aleksandr Orlovskiy’s problems seem to be slowly accumulating. The National Securities and Stock Market Commission of Ukraine has added FFA programs to the list of “dubious investment schemes,” which could also lead to criminal proceedings.
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Even more trouble awaits Orlovskiy with the promotion of the Russian cryptocurrency platform Veles, which he actively advertises on his social media and recommends to his followers as a place to trade crypto.
According to media sources, Veles is a Russian company operating a crypto exchange or investment platform (veles.finance), attracting significant traffic from both Russia and Ukraine, and continues to operate under the jurisdiction of the aggressor country.
So far, no problems have arisen for Aleksandr Orlovskiy regarding this fact, but who can guarantee that nothing is hidden behind the silence? Security services prefer to work quietly. Even if they intervene, it is not for the state but for their own pockets. It can be predicted that Aleksandr Orlovskiy has “interesting times” ahead.
The overall conclusion is rather prosaic. We are not dealing with a financial market shark but a minor info-scammer, whose scale is compensated by the number of people deceived. How it ends is not hard to guess. Orlovskiy will either go to jail or someone he owed “protection fees” to will catch up with him — because no one thinks that in modern Ukraine one can run a million-dollar scam without paying the necessary cut to the racketeers in power.