10-15 years ago, Internet scammers were sending letters about an African uncle who left you a huge money will and in order to receive it, you only need to pay a few hundred dollars in taxes to the sender’s card. This scheme for extorting money from gullible people worked not only in Ukraine.


But many years later, it was the Ukrainians who decided to modernize it and, under the guise of investing in cryptocurrency, allegedly backed by African gold, continue to rob people. The startup was invented by Kharkiv resident Yuriy Mochonyi and his friends.

In the material below, read the fantastic story of a modern scam, the inventors of which were not punished in any way.


September 2017. The regional TV channel "Channel 7" features unknown pseudo-entrepreneurs Dmitry Konoval and Yuriy Mochonyi. The hosts make a loud announcement - these young Ukrainians have come up with the world’s first cryptocurrency, which will be tied to gold and backed by it. This will make their coins stand out from other cryptocurrencies, because each investor will allegedly be able to personally control how his fortune grows.


Kharkiv resident Yuriy Mochonyi, whom TV presenters called the co-founder of the Sudan Gold Coin startup, tells viewers about the essence of the project. According to him, he and his business partners signed a contract with a Chinese company to supply equipment to gold-bearing sites in Sudan. In this African country, with the mediation of Sudanese officials, it is planned to mine gold, which ensures the existence of their cryptocurrency.

But there is a nuance, says Mochonyi. Before the plant in Africa starts working, he needs to sell about 500,000 coins at 50 cents each and raise start-up capital. At the same time, the cunning businessman does not hide the fact that the potentially collected 250 thousand dollars will be spent on paying marketers who will promote the project. And only after that can gold mining in Sudan begin.



At the same time, Yuriy Mochonyi and his comrades create a website for the Sudan Gold Coin project and quickly promote an Instagram page with purchased likes and comments. On social networks, the pseudo-businessmen share details of their trip to Sudan and negotiations with potential African partners. It all looks a bit childish, but the project gains pathos from photos against the backdrop of government buildings in Khartoum and with unknown people.

Yuriy Mochonyi is in the middle

Dmitry Konoval and Yuriy Mochony – on the left

"...The main team went to meet with the Minister of Mining of Sudan Abdelbagi Gailani Ahmed Ali. True, a former minister, who has now founded his own consulting company and continues to work in the field of mining, but already as a businessman," Ukrainian scammers wrote in October 2017.

The story is increasingly starting to resemble a scam about an African uncle with a multi-million dollar will. After all, Mochonyi apparently met with a minister, but a former one, who is now just a businessman. It is this person who is supposed to help the Ukrainians launch a gold mining plant in Sudan.

Photos of Ukrainians visiting gold-bearing Sudanese sites frankly look like a sightseeing trip of ordinary tourists to exotic places. But the Sudan Gold Coin project page continued to be active. One of the startup’s co-founders spent the entire 2018 traveling around the world from Singapore to Korea, talking about the "revolution in the crypto industry." And then, at the end of 2018, the project’s social networks stopped updating.

On January 19, 2020, a message appeared on the Sudan Gold Coin Facebook page that the project had collapsed, but its developers were still looking for investors and like-minded people. That is, Mochonyi and the company admitted that they had deceived investors, but they were not going to stop there.

What actually happened? Kharkiv resident Yuriy Mochonyi and his friends spent two years scamming people out of money, telling tales about gold mining in Sudan, which would provide cryptocurrency. Trusting investors were taken in by the wave of crypto hype and bought these coins. It is not known for certain how much money Mochonyi and his friends were able to raise, but they certainly had enough for trips to exotic countries.

Now the official page of the Sudan Gold Coin project is decorated with a warning message from a Swiss company, which the dealers obviously also managed to scam. The Swiss write that in fact, "the distributors of Sudan Gold Coin (SGC) are not associated with the government of Sudan and its various ministries, nor with the financial regulatory authorities of Switzerland, nor with Netarc AG. "...Due to the exposure of a fraudulent scheme for collecting and misusing funds through an ICO and the subsequent unethical behavior of its promoters with investors and partners, we were forced to officially sever ties and file a lawsuit against the promoters of SGC," Netarc AG reports.

It was not possible to find out how the legal red tape ended, or whether it ended at all. But, apparently, Yuriy Mochonyi and his comrades were not punished for the fraudulent scheme. Moreover, in the fall of 2020, the businessman managed to run for the Kharkiv Regional Council from the now banned Opposition Platform - For Life, the godfather of Russian dictator Putin.

The CHESTNO movement, which has been monitoring elections for many years, reports that Mochonyi in 2023 contacted the PolitKhab team with a request to remove information about his candidacy and offered to "donate" for it. He claimed that the CEC data was erroneous. However, after verification, his candidacy was confirmed and activists regarded Mochonyi’s actions as an attempt at bribery.

In December 2023, "gold miner" and connoisseur of the "Russian world" Yuriy Mochonyi registered the company "Aviatekhnologiya". The scope of activity of the LLC is very diverse - from non-specialized wholesale trade to engineering and production of tools and equipment for measurement, research and navigation. The company has an authorized capital of 1 million hryvnia, but no information about its activities could be found. Probably, this million may be the remainder of the money that Mochonyi received for cryptocurrency coins secured by phantom Sudanese gold.

At first glance, the "success" story of Kharkiv resident Yuriy Mochonyi may seem rather petty and even comical. But in fact, the imitator of the senders of letters about the will of an African uncle once again reminded that you need to invest your money wisely. Tales about African gold, of course, can be interesting, but there is as much truth in them as in the stories of employees of fraudulent call centers.