A sprawling academic cheating network turbocharged by Google Ads that has generated nearly $25 million in revenue has curious ties to a Kremlin-connected oligarch whose Russian university builds drones for Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Nerdify homepage.
The link between essay mills and Russian attack drones might seem improbable, but understanding it begins with a simple question: How does a human-intensive academic cheating service stay relevant in an era when students can simply ask AI to write their term papers? The answer – recasting the business as an AI company – is just the latest chapter in a story of many rebrands that link the operation to Russia’s largest private university.
Search in Google for any terms related to academic cheating services — e.g., “help with exam online” or “term paper online” — and you’re likely to encounter websites with the words “nerd” or “geek” in them, such as thenerdify[.]com and geekly-hub[.]com. With a simple request sent via text message, you can hire their tutors to help with any assignment.
These nerdy and geeky-branded websites frequently cite their “honor code,” which emphasizes they do not condone academic cheating, will not write your term papers for you, and will only offer support and advice for customers. But according to This Isn’t Fine, a Substack blog about contract cheating and essay mills, the Nerdify brand of websites will happily ignore that mantra.
“We tested the quick SMS for a price quote,” wrote This Isn’t Fine author Joseph Thibault. “The honor code references and platitudes apparently stop at the website. Within three minutes, we confirmed that a full three-page, plagiarism- and AI-free MLA formatted Argumentative essay could be ours for the low price of $141.”
A screenshot from Joseph Thibault’s Substack post shows him purchasing a 3-page paper with the Nerdify service.
Google prohibits ads that “enable dishonest behavior.” Yet, a sprawling global essay and homework cheating network run under the Nerdy brands has quietly bought its way to the top of Google searches – booking revenues of almost $25 million through a maze of companies in Cyprus, Malta and Hong Kong, while pitching “tutoring” that delivers finished work that students can turn in.
When one Nerdy-related Google Ads account got shut down, the group behind the company would form a new entity with a front-person (typically a young Ukrainian woman), start a new ads account along with a new website and domain name (usually with “nerdy” in the brand), and resume running Google ads for the same set of keywords.
UK companies belonging to the group that have been shut down by Google Ads since Jan 2025 include:
–Proglobal Solutions LTD (advertised nerdifyit[.]com);
–AW Tech Limited (advertised thenerdify[.]com);
–Geekly Solutions Ltd (advertised geekly-hub[.]com).
Currently active Google Ads accounts for the Nerdify brands include:
-OK Marketing LTD (advertising geekly-hub[.]net), formed in the name of Olha Karpenko, a young Ukrainian woman;
–Two Sigma Solutions LTD (advertising litero[.]ai), formed in the name of Olekszij Pokatilo.
Google’s Ads Transparency page for current Nerdify advertiser OK Marketing LTD.
Mr. Pokatilo has been in the essay-writing business since at least 2009, operating a paper-mill enterprise called Livingston Research alongside Alexander Korsukov, who is listed as an owner. According to a lengthy account from a former employee, Livingston Research mainly farmed its writing tasks out to low-cost workers from Kenya, Philippines, Pakistan, Russia and Ukraine.
Pokatilo moved from Ukraine to the United Kingdom in Sept. 2015 and co-founded a company called Awesome Technologies, which pitched itself as a way for people to outsource tasks by sending a text message to the service’s assistants.
The other co-founder of Awesome Technologies is 36-year-old Filip Perkon, a Swedish man living in London who touts himself as a serial entrepreneur and investor. Years before starting Awesome together, Perkon and Pokatilo co-founded a student group called Russian Business Week while the two were classmates at the London School of Economics. According to the Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev, Perkon’s birth certificate was issued by the Soviet Embassy in Sweden.
Alexey Pokatilo (left) and Filip Perkon at a Facebook event for startups in San Francisco in mid-2015.
Around the time Perkon and Pokatilo launched Awesome Technologies, Perkon was building a social media propaganda tool called the Russian Diplomatic Online Club, which Perkon said would “turbo-charge” Russian messaging online. The club’s newsletter urged subscribers to install in their Twitter accounts a third-party app called Tweetsquad that would retweet Kremlin messaging on the social media platform.
Perkon was praised by the Russian Embassy in London for his efforts: During the contentious Brexit vote that ultimately led to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, the Russian embassy in London used this spam tweeting tool to auto-retweet the Russian ambassador’s posts from supporters’ accounts.
Neither Mr. Perkon nor Mr. Pokatilo replied to requests for comment.
A review of corporations tied to Mr. Perkon as indexed by the business research service North Data finds he holds or held director positions in several U.K. subsidiaries of Synergy, Russia’s largest private education provider. Synergy has more than 35,000 students, and sells T-shirts with patriotic slogans such as “Crimea is Ours,” and “The Russian Empire — Reloaded.”
The president of Synergy is Vadim Lobov, a Kremlin insider whose headquarters on the outskirts of Moscow reportedly features a wall-sized portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the pop-art style of Andy Warhol. For a number of years, Lobov and Perkon co-produced a cross-cultural event in the U.K. called Russian Film Week.
Synergy President Vadim Lobov and Filip Perkon, speaking at a press conference for Russian Film Week, a cross-cultural event in the U.K. co-produced by both men.
Mr. Lobov was one of 11 individuals reportedly hand-picked by the convicted Russian spy Marina Butina to attend the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast held in Washington D.C. just two weeks after President Trump’s first inauguration.
While Synergy University promotes itself as Russia’s largest private educational institution, hundreds of international students tell a different story. Online reviews from students paint a picture of unkept promises: Prospective students from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and other nations paying thousands in advance fees for promised study visas to Russia, only to have their applications denied with no refunds offered.
“My experience with Synergy University has been nothing short of heartbreaking,” reads one such account. “When I first discovered the school, their representative was extremely responsive and eager to assist. He communicated frequently and made me believe I was in safe hands. However, after paying my hard-earned tuition fees, my visa was denied. It’s been over 9 months since that denial, and despite their promises, I have received no refund whatsoever. My messages are now ignored, and the same representative who once replied instantly no longer responds at all. Synergy University, how can an institution in Europe feel comfortable exploiting the hopes of Africans who trust you with their life savings? This is not just unethical — it’s predatory.”
This pattern repeats across reviews by multilingual students from Pakistan, Nepal, India, and various African nations — all describing the same scheme: Attractive online marketing, promises of easy visa approval, upfront payment requirements, and then silence after visa denials.
Reddit discussions in r/Moscow and r/AskARussian are filled with warnings. “It’s a scam, a diploma mill,” writes one user. “They literally sell exams. There was an investigation on Rossiya-1 television showing students paying to pass tests.”
The Nerdify website’s “About Us” page says the company was co-founded by Pokatilo and an American named Brian Mellor. The latter identity seems to have been fabricated, or at least there is no evidence that a person with this name ever worked at Nerdify.
Rather, it appears that the SMS assistance company co-founded by Messrs. Pokatilo and Perkon (Awesome Technologies) fizzled out shortly after its creation, and that Nerdify soon adopted the process of accepting assignment requests via text message and routing them to freelance writers.
A closer look at an early “About Us” page for Nerdify in The Wayback Machine suggests that Mr. Perkon was the real co-founder of the company: The photo at the top of the page shows four people wearing Nerdify T-shirts seated around a table on a rooftop deck in San Francisco, and the man facing the camera is Perkon.
Filip Perkon, top right, is pictured wearing a Nerdify T-shirt in an archived copy of the company’s About Us page. Image: archive.org.
Where are they now? Pokatilo is currently running a startup called Litero.Ai, which appears to be an AI-based essay writing service. In July 2025, Mr. Pokatilo received pre-seed funding of $800,000 for Litero from an investment program backed by the venture capital firms AltaIR Capital, Yellow Rocks, Smart Partnership Capital, and I2BF Global Ventures.
Meanwhile, Filip Perkon is busy setting up toy rubber duck stores in Miami and in at least three locations in the United Kingdom. These “Duck World” shops market themselves as “the world’s largest duck store.”
This past week, Mr. Lobov was in India with Putin’s entourage on a charm tour with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Although Synergy is billed as an educational institution, a review of the company’s sprawling corporate footprint (via DNS) shows it also is assisting the Russian government in its war against Ukraine.
Synergy University President Vadim Lobov (right) pictured this week in India next to Natalia Popova, a Russian TV presenter known for her close ties to Putin’s family, particularly Putin’s daughter, who works with Popova at the education and culture-focused Innopraktika Foundation.
The website bpla.synergy[.]bot, for instance, says the company is involved in developing combat drones to aid Russian forces and to evade international sanctions on the supply and re-export of high-tech products.
A screenshot from the website of synergy,bot shows the company is actively engaged in building armed drones for the war in Ukraine.
KrebsOnSecurity would like to thank the anonymous researcher NatInfoSec for their assistance in this investigation.
Damn, Butina is like a cartoon character… She used to host a daily, stupid prime-time TV show on Channel One, the main state-run Russian TV channel. The entire show was dedicated to discussing the physical disadvantages of top Western politicians. She is a freak.
“…Synergy, Russia’s largest private education provider.” – as they call themselves…
Filip Perkon is small compared to Grigory Avetov who you can write entire books about. “Grigory Avetov” is Vadim Lobov’s favorite “son.”
Remarkable expose Krebs! Really striking for how it reveals the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate criminal activity academic cheating, educational scams, social media manipulation, and military support for an ongoing war – all flowing through a relatively small network of individuals.
Philip Perkon and Alex Pokatilo also seem to be able to blend in, easily being able to travel to US and EU, this all points to lot of risks for the west that we’re not prepared for.
Livingston Research still owes me $300 dollars when they shut down my account. I did everything they asked for but they still stole my money. Hope they get some karmic justice for selling drones to kill little ukranian kids with.
Looks like Filip Perkon and Vadim Lobov would fit right in at Mar-A-Lago, so they can meet with Trump, discuss how to use drones to kill Ukranian babies and then hop on a jet back to Moscow.
It may be a coincidence, but the “Mellor” last name of the fictional identity Brian Mellor is very similar to a relatively common first name in the Soviet period: “Melor.” It stands for Marx-Engels-Lenin-October-Revolution.
Very good insight, James!
How is Vadim Lobov not on a sanctions list? His actions seem to be similar to Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. I guess only benifit is Lobov rips off African students and makes them less likely to think Russians are cute and cuddly?
Turns out they were money laundering in Florida
″[I was surprised by] the number of times, even when we hear it in passing, that people would post on Twitter, ‘Are they money laundering?’” Fedotova said, categorically denying the allegations. “It’s funny that people are so quick to accuse.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/23/how-londons-rubber-duck-stores-stay-above-water.html
Wonder where the “this is all russophobia” comments are?
Obviously these are upstanding russians
just setting up companies in Uk, Cyprus, and Miami, Fl
and they’re also making drones to attack Ukraine
sick!
Alexey Pokatilo is Ukrainian though. Another sick attempt to play Russian vs Ukrainians card when reality is more complicated.
I’m more interested why security researcher “NatInfoSec” is anonymous? What he is scared of? May be of his own last as cybercriminal or is he a convicted pedophile?
Ukraine is an independent country – the truth is very simple. Putin is a madman who is killing innocent Ukrainians to satisfy his mad man imperial fantasies. And Putin has enough serfs like you, Pokatilo and Perkon who will sell out humanity for 4 pieces of silver.
How exactly is the reality more complicated? Please tell us how Russians are not killing Ukrainians?
“But Russia is peaceful, we offer nothing but help for college students…”
Don’t imagine you’ll get anything back but more whataboutism BS.
But mealy reality is more complicated!!!
Ukraine is Russia
therefore ukranians must just all die and give their life to mother russia?
the contortions these putin apoligizing psychos need to engage in to justify this makes you wonder what’s wrong with them
Either their job or their shared ideology, or both.
Attacking security researchers with thin accusations is par for course.
I wrote you: Pokatilo is Ukrainian, many companies are registered in names of Ukrainians, so why are you playing a political card now? Ukrainians are part of this “academic cheating network” scam, together with Russians, same as many other “essay writing” scams. Everybody who is familiar with this kind of business knows it. One of the biggest “shady network” has even an office in a center of Kyiv on Kreshhatik.
Brave and anonymous NatInfoSec doesn’t want to tell us more about that? Not political correct anymore, all scammers are de facto Russians now?
According to you all Ukrainians are Russians and there is no independent Ukraine. But according to you Pokatilo is a Ukrainian (although Pokatilo claims to be Hungarian, British, Portuguese and many other citizenship to avoid the reduced opportunities available to typical Russians).
If you know so much about scamming then post the info publicly. Which shady network has office in center of Kyiv on Kreshhatik? Is that Ukranian network also being run from Moscow and Saint Petersburg?
Is it normal for large Ukranian criminal businesses to be controlled and operated from Moscow?
Enlighten us. We live in civilized society where this sort of thing is far less common. You seem to live in something out of the movie Max Max. Sad !
This is not surprising at all. Filip applied for a Russian passport just so he could vote for Putin.
Pretty sure Duck World by Irina Fedotova and Filip Perkov is being used to launder and move money around. They have bank accounts in Florida which is very useful for people in Putin’s inner circle.
Perkon seems like the ideal spy, private school education, access to millions of dollars, patriotic devotion to the Russian motherland.
I think this text is telling: “Synergy University, how can an institution in Europe…” from the student from Africa who was ripped off by the new Russian capitalists. Russia is not and never has been Europe. Yes businesses based in London, drive-up passport services in Sweden, investors from all over the planet melted down into freshly minted losers via a pours EU.
Well they’ve infiltrated successfully into all kinds of places that might garner trust. It’s obfuscated.
Is Filip Perkon a European? How about Alexie Pokatilo?
“porus” not “pours” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The only part of this that doesn’t fit the script and confuses me… rubber duck stores? Huh?
Do they have listening devices or jam GPS or something? 24k gold versions with “be best”?
The rubber duck stores are a front for laundering money. Anyone with an hour of law enforcement experience knows this instantly. In person, the stores are empty with the rare exception of a curious tourist. A few Russians are probably in the back of the store playing cards. On paper, these stores are booming businesses generating piles of cash.
Duck World rental costs likely exceed $85,000 a year. 1622 Washington Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33139, United States, is a pricey area to set up a retail store front. The ducks themselves seem to sell for between $10 and $30. The math just ain’t mathing! You add staffing costs, marketing and real estate expenses, they’d need to be selling a lot of rubber ducks to be able to afford the rent on just the Miami Beach store. Not to mention the 3 other international stores in prime spots across the UK.
Far more plausible that Filip Perkon and Irina Fedotova are using Duck World to wash the dirty money they make from ventures like Nerdify, Livingston Research and Synergy University. There’s also the added use of having US bank accounts… Which are often sticklers for physical presence these days. So they show the bank that there’s an actual store, tick the box, get the bank account… All of a sudden they get fully functional US bank accounts they can use with very little scrutiny to move large volume of cash through wires.
Then they can use the bank accounts to buy dual use goods, ship them to UAE, India wherever and get them back to Moscow.
It’s amazing that Brian Krebs is the only person policing these things. How did Filip Perkon and Irina Fedotova get US visas?
This text is telling: “Synergy University, how can an institution in Europe…” this from that aspiring student from Africa who was ripped off. Russia has pulled off an incredible update morphing into Europe? The telltale signs are there for sure – murky UK based LLCs and brands, drive-up passport services in Sweden, Euro visas hanging racked like gift cards at the check-out line, and exciting possibilities in Florida real estate. Maybe a porus Europe has actually become Russia? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Vadim Lobov was just in India with Kirill Dmitriev and Dmitriev’s wife. Crazy that Indian government would allow such scammers to spawn such sprawling scam operations in India (Synergy has at least 3 universities in India). And welcome them with open arms.
https://www.aninews.in/news/world/asia/russian-education-agency-opens-its-branch-in-delhi20251205043957/
Indians are being systemically defrauded and trafficked to in Ukraine too:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly6ve2x72xo
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20251111-deceived-and-deployed-russia-recruits-indians-as-cannon-fodder-on-the-ukrainian-front
It’s nuts that the Modi government is welcoming these people to kill Indian youth.
Starts with kids buying essays to cheat and ends with Russian oligarch who is building armed drones to kill Ukrainians in the illegal war.
Only Brian Krebs offers reporting like this.
Spectacular, Brian!
I hope your efforts are rewarded with Vadim Lobov getting sanctioned because it is obvious that Synergy University is operating companies and bank accounts in UK and US right now.