Court Grants Access to Lifecell Documents in Mykolaiv Fraud Case

In Mykolaiv region, a court granted temporary access to the documents of a mobile operator in a fraud case. The entrepreneur, at the request of the alleged military administration, transferred funds to support the army.

The Pervomaiskyi City District Court of Mykolaiv Oblast has ruled to grant temporary access to the documents of Lifecell LLC regarding the subscriber number used for fraud.

According to the case, on January 27, 2025, the head of the Imperator farm received a call from an unknown man who introduced himself as the head of the Pervomaisk District Military Administration. He asked for financial assistance for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the amount of 10 thousand hryvnias.

The entrepreneur, believing the call to be genuine, received a scanned copy of a letter with an "official" request to transfer funds to the bank account of Taxombank JSC.

Using Internet banking, he transferred the specified amount. However, after that, the subscriber blocked him in all messengers, and further verification of the documents revealed a fake letter with a mistake in the region, Vinnytsia instead of Mykolaiv. The entrepreneur realized that he had been deceived and reported the incident to law enforcement agencies.

A pre-trial investigation was initiated to establish all the circumstances and persons involved.

The court ruled to provide temporary access to the documents of Lifecell LLC regarding the subscriber number used for fraud. The documents will be provided for one month from the date of the ruling. A pre-trial investigation has been initiated to establish all the circumstances and persons involved.

Recently, the police exposed a criminal scheme and detained its participants - residents of Mykolaiv and Kyiv who collaborated with Russian citizens. On behalf of the head of Mykolaiv regional administration, they were extorting money from entrepreneurs in the region. The criminals opened new bank accounts or used existing ones to receive the money lured from gullible citizens.

Last year, in Mykolaiv, fraudsters on behalf of Vitaliy Kim extorted money from entrepreneurs allegedly to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They created fake appeals stylized as official documents, which, despite numerous mistakes, looked quite plausible.

Despite the overall decrease in the number of fraud cases, their level remains significantly higher than before the full-scale invasion. In 2024, more than 60,000 criminal proceedings on fraud were opened in Ukraine, which is 2.7 times more than in the pre-war period. At the same time, only one in four cases goes to court.

Анна Бальчінос