Fraudulent operations in Cyprus: WakeApp founder Eduard Lebedev connected to a clandestine casino scheme aimed at British citizens

Cyprus has long been beloved by people from the CIS working in the field of illegal gambling. And so, on Wednesday, November 6, the district court of the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, held a hearing in the case of the extradition of a Russian national who was detained in October in the center of Limassol.

Earlier, the police of the Republic of Cyprus reported his capture on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Europol. The extradition request came from the United Kingdom, where the defendant is accused of attracting citizens of the United Kingdom to illegal online casino platforms.

As reported by the portal ruscyprus, during the hearings in the cyber fraud case details of the scheme’s organizer were revealed. It turned out to be another citizen of the Russian Federation, Eduard Lebedev. We conducted our own investigation, during which we found out that the real name of the new person involved in the case is — Eduard Eduardovich Lebedev.

The so‑called organizer of online casino platforms on the territory of Europe does not especially hide himself: the 34‑year‑old Muscovite proudly declares on his VK page in his status: “If your dreams are not enough for a couple of life sentences, then these are mediocre dreams.” These words, one could say, have every chance of becoming prophetic.

On the wall of this page he advertises his sites WakeApp – http://www.wakeappnetwork(.)com and www.wakeapp(.)ru, which are unavailable today. However, the web archive data makes it possible to understand that WakeApp is the name of the partner network.

Eduard Lebedev himself has never hidden the fact that he is the founder of WakeApp — this is indicated on his LinkedIn. In addition, Eduard Eduardovich Lebedev was the head of the legal entity LLC Veikapp, liquidated in 2021. The activities of the legal entity were listed as: “Activities related to the use of computing equipment and information technologies, other,” which makes it possible to reliably establish that this legal entity is indeed the affiliate network WakeApp.

A vacancy for a similarly named legal entity in the Republic of Belarus LLC “KrokusApps / WakeApp” leads us to the Chilli Partners service. The job description directly states that “Chilli Partners is an international holding in the iGaming industry that creates and develops online products.” The company openly declares its connection with online casinos. The company’s website even lists the brands of illegal online casinos belonging to the holding.

That Lebedev is the head of Chilli Partners is also confirmed by the news from July 16, 2021, on the portal igbaffiliate, where a comment on the merger of new companies in the online gambling sphere is given by a person named Edward Swan (swan translated from English means swan). Moreover, in the same article it is directly written that Eduard lives in Cyprus, where the headquarters of his company Chilli Partners is located.

These facts make it possible to draw an unequivocal conclusion — in the case of the Russian detained in Cyprus under a Europol warrant the owner of a giant holding in the online casino industry is involved. As reported by the portal ruscyprus, in the courtroom accusations were heard against Eduard Lebedev for organizing the operation of illegal online casino platforms throughout Europe.

On the territory of the United Kingdom there is currently an active fight against illegal gambling. According to research data, in 2023 the volume of the online casino market in the United Kingdom amounted to about 7 billion pounds sterling. The government of the United Kingdom is actively strengthening measures to control and counteract illegal activities in this area.

The district court of Nicosia postponed the proceedings in the case and scheduled the next hearing for the end of November. Official comments from the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Cyprus have not yet been received.

In recent years, the authorities of Cyprus have stepped up the capture of criminals who have committed one or another crime in cyberspace. For example, it is enough to recall how in 2020 a Russian, Alexey Berkovich, was extradited from Cyprus to the United Kingdom. He was also arrested in Cyprus in 2020 at the request of the British authorities.

He was accused of participating in a large‑scale cyberattack on financial institutions in the United Kingdom, which led to the leakage of thousands of clients’ data. After long court proceedings, the Cypriot authorities approved Berkovich’s extradition to the United Kingdom, where he faced trial and further investigation.

Also quite recently, Cyprus stripped the citizenship of the founder of a crypto pyramid — Polish national Roman Kazimierz Ziemian. At present, he is accused of stealing 21 million dollars through the FutureNet trading platform. The Cypriot police received notification from Interpol only last year. He now faces up to 14 years of imprisonment.

It is also hard to forget the case of another cyber extradition: this time the criminal was Bulgarian hacker Nikolay Dimitrov, who used servers in Cyprus to coordinate attacks on major British online platforms. After his arrest in Cyprus and an extensive investigation, the Cypriot court approved his extradition to the United Kingdom. Dimitrov was accused of creating a botnet that was used to conduct DDoS attacks.

Cyprus systematically finds itself in the spotlight because of the extradition of cybercriminals to the United Kingdom. Thanks to close cooperation with British law enforcement agencies and effective legislative mechanisms, this island has become one of the key points in the fight against cybercrime.