How Ukrainian geeks are making gullible Russians pay for the war with a dating scam

A group of Ukrainian scammers called the Monetary Army is using fake dating profiles to defraud Russian men out of thousands of pounds, with some of the profits funnelling into Kyiv’s war effort.

Alongside the dating profiles, the scammers use illegitimate websites and cryptocurrency transactions in a business that allows them to get rich quickly while avenging themselves on Moscow’s citizens.

The Monetary Army was born in 2020, when young Ukrainian tech-workers took advantage of surging dating app use during the Covid pandemic to target Russian men looking for love.

Since then, it has grown from a small group to a team of 100, says Arthur, a 24-year-old man from Kharkiv who was an early member. He requested that his last name be withheld for security concerns.

When he met The Telegraph on a hot summer day in Kharkiv, Arthur calmly ignored an air raid alert as he showed off his roster of fake dating profiles on the encrypted messaging app Telegram – all of them featuring stunning women.

While the city remains under constant bombardment from Russian forces, Arthur interacts with Russian men under the guise of beauties such as Natasha, Anastasia or Olena. All have long blonde or brown hair, light-coloured eyes, large lips, and perfect make-up.

After creating a profile, Arthur joins a Telegram channel called Divinchik, a common dating app in Russia, and matches with men.

“During the dialogue when the case comes to the meeting, my task is to invite men to one of the events that we have on a fake home site,” he explains. “For example, to the theatre, stand-up comedy show, ballet, or cinema. And then the man never meets the woman.”

The Monetary Army uses five websites to entrap Russian men in the scam. All the websites show an event calendar, like an exhibition featuring the Ukrainian-Russian 19th-century painter Ilya Repin or a Vivaldi Four Seasons concert.

The website The Telegraph was shown appears legitimate, equipped with pictures and videos of the events, travel guides and an about page that claims that millions of people use it monthly.

Buying two tickets costs an average of ₤35, and the men are instructed to pay the website through cryptocurrency. After completing the transaction, Arthur tells the Russian men he can no longer make the date and suggests they ask for a refund. The customer support Telegram channel, which is often Arthur on a separate account, begins the scam.

Arthur says: “The system tells the men to buy two more tickets as a deposit to get a refund for the initial tickets.

“Thanks to which they put in more money, in principle, an unlimited amount, depending on how much of a fool he is.”

The men can then be trapped in a never-ending cycle of putting additional money into the system. “They start telling the victim that he made some mistake in filling out the return form.  You already put two payments, now you need to put four.”

The Monetary Army can make anywhere from ₤78 upwards for each scam, with an average of £100, but Arthur said the maximum that has ever been stolen from one man was ₤19,000. Part of the money goes towards helping Ukraine’s military, but most goes to pay the staff. Arthur makes ₤1,575 a month from the job.

Others work for the Monetary Army part-time or whenever they need extra cash. A 29-year-old woman from Kharkiv named Yana, who asked that her last name be withheld, works for the scam in the winter when work is more challenging to come by. She said that she looks for “idiots” to match with for the scam.

Often, the men Yana matches with are labourers, police officers, Russian soldiers, or students in a military academy. The latter tell Yana that they are going to war and ask questions like “Will you wait for me?” Of course she will, Yana replies.

“They were saying yes, we are heroes, but I didn’t really take the conversation in the direction of politics. I was not interested in talking about politics.”

Sometimes, the men Yana matches with try to call their supposed date or ask for explicit images, while others send their own graphic pictures. “There are idiots everywhere. But you block them right away, well what good are they?” she laughed.

Yana was first introduced to the Monetary Army by Arthur in the summer of 2022, shortly after Ukraine’s military managed to push Russian troops out of the Kharkiv region.

Before the war, Yana said she had never considered being part of a scheme to rob Russian men. However, the 29-year-old, who has remained in Kharkiv for the entirety of the war, has witnessed the constant attacks on her city and the brutal murder of her fellow Ukrainians in Vladimir Putin’s war.

Since then, Yana says she has enjoyed scamming Russian men. With a smile, she says: “Considering they bombed a lot, it didn’t hurt my conscience.”