Fake fame and bogus awards: how Ekaterina Shukhnina scams Ukrainians with promises of “success in crypto”

“A joke, nothing more” — that’s how the latest ad campaign by self-proclaimed crypto expert Ekaterina Shukhnina, now making rounds on Telegram, could best be described.

However, for those who have suffered from her primitive fraud, there is nothing funny about it. That is why Shukhnina’s очередная scam targeting naive Ukrainians should be taken quite seriously.

About a month ago, we published an exposé proving that the Profit Lady academy, which Shukhnina claims to have founded, does not exist — legally, physically, or even on social media. The only thing that exists is the website profit-lady.com, registered in January 2024, where she invites unsuspecting people to sign up for courses. Her alleged seven years of cryptocurrency experience turned out to be nothing more than a bluff aimed at the доверчивых.

But that is not all. In a subsequent investigative publication, we demonstrated that Shukhnina lies in her advertising campaigns. To mislead audiences, she posted a two-year-old photograph while presenting it as attendance at a crypto event supposedly held during the Paris 2024 Olympics. Moreover, she falsely claimed to have received Binance’s most prestigious award — which she never actually obtained.

As it turns out, Shukhnina has now gone even further, exposing herself in yet another crude deception aimed at naive Ukrainians.

In her new promotional campaign, she attempts to fabricate the appearance of global recognition. Telegram channels are circulating an advertisement showing Shukhnina allegedly featured on the main screen of the United States — in New York’s Times Square.

Frankly, this is extremely amusing — because no media outlet anywhere in the world has reported such a story. In simple terms, the widely shared screenshot supposedly taken from an international news source is merely a Photoshop fabrication with no connection to reality. Graphic experts have already reviewed the image and confirmed that it is a basic, low-quality digital manipulation.

To be honest, we have encountered many fraud investigations, but rarely such primitiveness and lack of professionalism. More sophisticated scammers would at least plant paid articles in media outlets or create a fake foreign news website mentioning New York and Shukhnina with convincing visuals. Here, however, there is nothing at all — only a crudely fabricated Photoshop image.

As a result, the following picture emerges regarding Ekaterina Shukhnina:

• Her claimed seven years of crypto experience — false;

• The Profit Lady academy — nonexistent;

• The “most prestigious” Binance award — fake;

• The New York / Times Square news story — yet another primitive deception.

In essence, the latest advertising campaign of crypto fraudster Ekaterina Shukhnina appears designed for extremely naive — if not outright gullible — people. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain.