Scam with agricultural land worth 17 million exposed in Kherson region

Hundreds of hectares of land worth millions were appropriated in Kherson region. Investigators believe that a group of people used forged documents to register property rights in the Beryslav district.

This is evidenced by the ruling of the Zavodskyi District Court of Mykolaiv.

The court granted investigators temporary access to bank documents in the case of fraudulent acquisition of agricultural land with a total area of more than 300 hectares in Kherson region. The land was worth over UAH 17 million.

The motion was filed by the Kherson regional police in coordination with the regional prosecutor's office as part of the pre-trial investigation under Part 5 of Art. 190, Parts 4, 5 of Art. 190 and Art. 358 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - fraud on a large scale and forgery of documents.

The investigation established that in August-September 2024, a group of people took possession of land plots within the Tyahyn territorial community of Beryslav district. To do this, the defendants allegedly forged technical documentation, divided the plots and re-registered them to fictitious persons. In total, it is 307.84 hectares of agricultural land.

According to the StateGeoCadastre, some of the plots registered in the names of individuals were subsequently divided into smaller plots. The documentation was paid for in four payments of 3,000 hryvnias each. These transfers were made by an unidentified person through a bank branch or a device of a JSC whose name has not been disclosed.

The investigators requested access to the data on the movement of funds on the account from which the transfers were made, as well as to the banking records of its owner. They also asked for technical information, such as IP address, MAC address, device IMEI, geolocation, photos and videos from surveillance cameras that could have captured the person who made the payment. The court granted the motion, and the investigation is ongoing.

Also, according to the investigation, one of the defendants entered false data into the State Register through the ASC. Back in February 2025, he was chosen as a preventive measure - detention with the possibility of bail. After an appeal, the bail was reduced to UAH 242 thousand, and the man was released from the pre-trial detention center. The court recently extended the suspect's preventive measure.

In April, an official of the Kherson Department of the StateGeoCadastre was notified of suspicion of fraud related to illegal land schemes. In total, law enforcement officers have exposed nine participants in the scheme, five of whom have already received suspended sentences.

Анна Бальчінос