In August 2025, a post appeared on Threads in which an anonymous user asked help to leave Ukraine. A month later, he wrote that he had successfully crossed the border and thanked the anonymous project “Shadow Economy” for this. After talking to the author of the post, the Suspilne investigative editorial office discovered a possible fraud scheme that offers various ways to illegally cross the border. The person behind this scheme has gambling debts and connections to Russia.
Empty accounts: social networks promote a scheme for draft evasion
On August9, 2025, the anonymous account_uurinko_333 published its first post on Threads asking for help to leave Ukraine. The post quickly gathered hundreds of reactions.
A month later, a post about a successful departure from Ukraine appeared on the same account. The author claimed that he had managed to cross the border thanks to “Shadow Economy”. It is mentioned online as an anonymous program that supposedly guarantees unhindered border crossing to any country for a certain fee.
After that, the author of the post began to keep a daily “blog” about life in Europe, and corruption and war in Ukraine. At the same time, he often recommended “Shadow Economy”, and users, who called themselves clients of this “program”, left comments under the posts.
We noticed a similarity in the communication style of the commentators. Some of them published similar appeals for help with crossing the border, later mentioning “Shadow Economy” as a success story. All used different legends, in particular, stories about family members leaving, problems with law enforcement agencies, or other circumstances that, according to the authors, make life in Ukraine impossible.
We spoke with a user who claimed to have sought help to get her son out of the country. According to her, in less than three days after the post, her son was allegedly “released” from the military registration office and taken to Poland, where the woman was staying. Her account was later deleted. The empty account contained no content, except for mentions related to “Shadow Economy”.
Another “client” claimed that he was a deserter and, after applying to the project, allegedly quickly left Ukraine and obtained Romanian citizenship for25 thousand euros with the assistance of the anonymous group“Shadow Economy”.
Accounts that left “reviews” or told about “successful leaving” had been created a few days before the reported border crossing. Posts about successful cases were mostly commented on by the accounts that had previously published their own “leaving” stories. There were a minimum of third-party users in such discussions.
These same accounts appeared in posts by users who described other ways of illegal crossing of the border and left aggressive comments.
One of the accounts, which had previously publicly “reported” about the departure from Ukraine, later began publishing posts with pro-Russian messages and offensive statements about Ukraine and Ukrainians.
We also paid attention to the linguistic peculiarities of those who advertised the “Shadow Economy”: in posts and comments, users often switched from Ukrainian to Russian and vice versa. Some messages contained signs of incorrect translation or language constructions unnatural for the Ukrainian language.
Accounts promoting the “Shadow Economy” continue to appear and publish posts advertising the group.
What we learned about “clients”
We checked some of the mentioned accounts. The account of one of the first “clients” of the “Shadow Economy” – _uurinko_333 – began its activity with a message about the desire to leave Ukraine. However, after examining it in more detail, we found the first inconsistency in the description of the trip.
In September 2025, the user wrote that he was met in Lutsk and then escorted across the border to Lublin. However, in a more recent post from December 2025, the same account described a different scenario, in which crossing the border took place in an ambulance.
The image of the ambulance turned out to be borrowed: we found an identical photo taken near the oncology building of the “Okhmatdyt” hospital in Kyiv. The vehicle has the markings of the German initiative that provides emergency care and evacuation of Ukrainian children from frontline regions.
In the comments under his posts, user _uurinko_333 mentioned that the price for crossing the border was $12,500, and mentioned additional services. In the posts, he claimed that from Poland he arrived in Slovenia and was waiting to obtain citizenship there.
We also spoke with another user with the nickname _grinchluka_, who introduced himself as a 26-year-old deserter who was urgently looking for a way to leave Ukraine. Comments with recommendations of “Shadow Economy” appeared under his post.
A few days later, the user reported that he had allegedly left Lutsk and was in Germany. In private correspondence, we asked him to describe crossing the border. By the way, he posted in Ukrainian on Threads, but wrote mostly in Russian in private correspondence.
According to _grinchluka_, the organizers carried out the procedure themselves, and he only had to follow the instructions without additional questions or checks. He also claims that an unknown man from Kyiv met him and accompanied to Lutsk. At the checkpoints, according to him, they did not ask anything or check anything, and the driver showed his ID. Then, according to our interlocutor, another person from the same network met him in Poland.
In the correspondence, he repeatedly mentions cryptocurrency: he says that he purchased the service through Revolut, a British fintech service that stopped serving Ukrainian residents in December2025.
The _grinchluka_ account from which we received these responses had zero followers. As of December 2025, this account had already been deleted.
Online casino streamer’s project
As we found out, “Shadow Economy” is a group that appeared in the summer of 2025 and began to actively promote itself on Threads, TikTok, and Telegram. In the publications, the authors describe a “service” of assistance with traveling abroad, publish messages about allegedly successful cases, and periodically provide updates on the “nuances” of crossing the border.
In the first month of activity, the posts told about the possibility of leaving various post-Soviet countries, but later the rhetoric changed: the project is now primarily aimed at Ukrainians. The posts include a price list and a promise of “fast service”.
In addition to border crossing, anonymous people advertise document processing in various countries, offer various types of “checks” and searches for information about people, as well as a number of other “services”. They offer to communicate with them in closed messengers and pay for services with cryptocurrency.
The Suspilne investigative editorial office managed to communicate under the legend with a person who introduced himself as a “contact” for “Shadow Economy” and has the nickname b0b GP.
On August 12, 2025, b0b GP, a participant in a chat for Ukrainians in Moldova, first offered travel abroad services.
We wrote to him that we were interested in leaving Ukraine. And b0b GP immediately offered two options. According to one scenario, we were supposed to cross the border without leaving an ambulance and wearing an oxygen mask. The route could start in Odesa and end in Bucharest. The proposed cost of such a “service” was 10 thousand dollars.
The option to cross the border on foot with a so-called accompanying person cost$12,000 with a prepayment to a cryptocurrency account.
The coordinator refused the offer to pay for the “service” in cash.
The so-called coordinator did not answer clarifying questions about the documents and details of the process and insisted on switching to a closed messenger after making a prepayment in cryptocurrency.
We were unable to find out the real name of the coordinator with the nickname b0b GP. However, we determined that he probably has a gambling addiction.
b0b GP spent significant amounts of money on several popular online casino platforms. In particular, in a thematic chat, the man admitted that he lost over $20,000 in July 2025 alone. In the spring of the same year, he said that he constantly played on various services.
b0b GP also appears as a participant in several Russian-language chats where he communicates with users from Russia. His circle of contacts and subscriptions on Telegram include accounts with Russian phone numbers.
We also found his account on the streaming platform Kick. This is a live streaming service launched in 2022, and it is linked to the gambling business.
On this platform, b0b GP has an account with the nickname gaba_king. He was broadcasting from at least January 2025 and stopped activity in the summer of the same year when he began to engage in “Shadow Economy”.
“Shadow Economy” is probably a fraud scheme
The investigative editorial office was unable to find the real stories of the numerous “reviews” about “Shadow Economy”.
Accounts disappear, are deleted, or show no signs of stable activity, and the authors of the posts provide no confirmation that their stories of“successful leaving” are true.
Those who want to leave are asked for money in advance. Therefore, we assume that the project is a fraud scheme.
Earlier, there were messages on social media that accused “Shadow Economy” project of fraud. The authors of these posts were immediately spammed with threatening messages by unknown accounts.
In response to our request, the National Police noted that the legislation does not provide for separate collection, recording, and generalization of information on the number of appeals related to fraud offers of illegal border crossing.
The State Border Service of Ukraine responded to our request that from September 1 to December 1, 2025, border guards detained 5,597 people for illegal crossing of the state border of Ukraine or attempting to do so.
“We record attempts to illegally cross the border every day,” says Andrii Demchenko, spokesman for the State Border Service of Ukraine. “During the entire period of martial law, there was probably not a single day when violators were not detained either directly at the border or in the border area.”
According to him, in 2025, the number of illegal crossing attempts decreased by 15% compared to 2024. The highest number of violations was recorded in August last year, but since September the figures have been declining.
“If we compare December with August, the decrease is almost three times. Weather conditions also affect this,” explains Demchenko. “Activity traditionally increases with the onset of favorable weather, from spring to the end of summer.”
Most violations, says Demchenko, occur on the “green” section of the border, that is, outside the checkpoints. According to the spokesman, the most priority areas are the borders with Romania and Moldova. At checkpoints, attempts to illegally cross are less common: forged documents are usually used or inspectors are tried to be bribed there.
In 2025, border guards, together with other law enforcement officers, exposed about 520 criminal groups that offered services for illegal border crossing. Most of those who want to leave illegally, says Demchenko, find the organizers of such groups through social networks. The cost of “services” ranges from 5 to 12 thousand dollars.
Border guards warn that a significant number of the offers are fraudulent, including promises of evacuation in ambulances, as in our investigation.
“This is a fraud scheme. In order for a medical team, which takes a person for treatment, to cross the border, there must be all the necessary documents for both the medical personnel and the person they are transporting. This is not done just like that: an ambulance arrives and they are let out without checking. This does not happen,” Andrii Demchenko emphasizes. “There were cases when special transport – cash transport cars or ambulances – were used only as taxis to transport people as close to the border as possible, bypassing road checkpoints, but without any chance of crossing the border itself.”
A separate aspect of the activities of such groups is information warfare and fear manipulation. According to Demchenko, the idea that people need to leave Ukraine by any means, even illegal means, to “save their lives” is actively being promoted on social networks.
“Russian special services are often behind this, trying to sow panic and support destructiveness: they say, you will die in Ukraine, no one can defeat Russia, so run away. They use this to fuel destructive sentiments and push people to illegal actions. Here, there is both enrichment through deception and what we see on the networks – systematic playing into the hands of the enemy. Thus, criminal business is intertwined with hostile propaganda, the purpose of which is to demoralize the society,” the spokesman for the State Border Service of Ukraine notes.
