International Forex fraud empire TeleTrade: how Volodymyr Chornobay and Serhiy Saroyan stole from clients across countries and used kidnapping to silence dissent

05 August 2026 , 19:20

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International Forex fraud empire TeleTrade: how Volodymyr Chornobay and Serhiy Saroyan stole from clients across countries and used kidnapping to silence dissent

The international brokerage company TeleTrade is known for attracting clients through mass calls to numbers from purchased databases. The main goal of such campaigns is to encourage people to invest in trading on the Forex market. In certain circles, it is better known as a company that deceives trusting clients and withdraws their money from their control.

This is reported by investigators.

In Russia, a criminal case against TeleTrade was opened back in 2014, and later in Kazakhstan as well. According to the investigation, no more than 5% of clients received any profit at all. After searches in the offices, it was revealed that most of the “winners” were people close to the management, while the rest were fake individuals who did not actually exist, although the company regularly published their lists.

Even when a client managed to show significant winnings, they did not receive the money. Investigators established that in such cases, clients were told about a “technical delay” in payments through the offshore company Teletrade-DJ Internationale Consulting Ltd, while the funds were withdrawn from the account by interfering with the software under the guise of supposedly client-executed transactions.

The founder and actual head of TeleTrade is considered to be Volodymyr Chornobay, who, while hiding from an international wanted list, died in Europe in 2019. After his death, the case was continued by his widow Anna Chornobay and nephew Oleh Suvorov. In Ukraine, the company’s activities were led by Serhiy Saroyan, who managed all local branches.

Saroyan gained wide “popularity” after he kidnapped and beat an employee of the Ukrainian division of TeleTrade — the Center for Exchange Technologies, Oleh Furduy. The reason was that Furduy advised defrauded clients on how to recover their funds. To secure the man’s release, his wife was forced to pay Saroyan $5,000.

After the high-profile scandal, a large amount of information about Serhiy Saroyan appeared online. In particular, it became known that he worked at TeleTrade from 2005 to 2014, until he was fired for embezzling funds not from clients but from the company’s owners themselves. This is mentioned, among others, by former employee Ihor on the website “O rabote,” as well as in other reviews on nahjob.top.

Elizabeth Baker

Technology & Business Editor