"You are financing the aggressor": scammers intimidated a former high-ranking official and took nearly 7 million from him

Operatives of the Kyiv police headquarters together with investigators and operatives of the Shevchenkivskyi Police Department exposed a large-scale fraud scheme in which the perpetrators again posed as representatives of law enforcement agencies. This was reported by the Kyiv police on 18 May 2026.

According to law enforcement, a supposed SBU officer called the 79-year-old man. The interlocutor began accusing him of financing the aggressor state, applied psychological pressure, spoke of allegedly opened criminal proceedings and sent forged summonses. To “prove his innocence”, the victim was offered to undergo an alleged check and to “declare” funds to a special unit. According to the prosecutor’s office, the man was also forced to agree to a so-called “search via video link”: he showed the scammers his savings, after which he put the money in a bag and handed it over near his home.

Overall the scammers seized funds in various currencies totaling 6.7 million hryvnias. Among what was handed over were $110,710, €10,200, as well as savings in Israeli shekels, British pounds and Czech korunas. According to a source in law enforcement at “Ukrainian Pravda”, the victim is the sixth Prime Minister of Ukraine Valeriy Pustovoytenko, who headed the government in 1997-1999. Officially, the police and the prosecutor’s office did not name the victim.

After receiving the money, one of the scheme’s participants, together with an accomplice, transferred part of the funds to the organizer’s crypto wallet. According to the prosecutor’s office, the dollars and euros were able to be converted to a cryptocurrency account, while the exchange office did not accept the other currency. During a search of the car of one of the detainees, law enforcement seized money that could not be exchanged.

Operatives detained two suspects. Investigators, under the procedural guidance of the Shevchenkivskyi District Prosecutor’s Office, notified them of suspicion under Part 5 of Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – fraud committed on an especially large scale or by an organized group. The article’s sanction provides up to 12 years of imprisonment with confiscation of property. The court chose as a preventive measure pretrial detention for the suspects. According to the prosecutor’s office, they may be released on bail: for one the bail amount is 4.9 million hryvnias, for the other – 3.3 million hryvnias.

Law enforcement are checking whether the detainees may be involved in other similar crimes. The police emphasize: scammers increasingly use the theme of war, pose as law enforcement officers and play on people’s fear of criminal liability.

No state body requires handing over cash “for inspection”, “for declaring” or “to confirm innocence”. In the case of such calls you should end the conversation and contact the police.

Previously we wrote:

• Fake summonses, “interrogations” and extortion: scammers massively pose as the SBU
• Posing as the SBU in Kyiv, scammers cheated pensioners out of almost 9 million hryvnias
• Telephone scammers attack again: in Mykolaiv a pensioner lost 1.2 million hryvnias
• Kept funds and lost 175 thousand: in Mykolaiv a woman became a victim of telephone scammers
• Scammers cheated residents of the Mykolaiv region out of more than 600 thousand hryvnias