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 (Alexey) 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 University, 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 University 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.
Update, Dec. 8, 10:06 a.m. ET: Mr. Pokatilo responded to requests for comment after the publication of this story. Pokatilo said he has no relation to Synergy nor to Mr. Lobov, and that his work with Mr. Perkon ended with the dissolution of Awesome Technologies.
“I have had no involvement in any of his projects and business activities mentioned in the article and he has no involvement in Litero.ai,” Pokatilo said of Perkon.
Mr. Pokatilo said his new company Litero “does not provide contract cheating services and is built specifically to improve transparency and academic integrity in the age of universal use of AI by students.”
“I am Ukrainian,” he said in an email. “My close friends, colleagues, and some family members continue to live in Ukraine under the ongoing invasion. Any suggestion that I or my company may be connected in any way to Russia’s war efforts is deeply offensive on a personal level and harmful to the reputation of Litero.ai, a company where many team members are Ukrainian.”
Update, Dec. 11, 12:07 p.m. ET: Mr. Perkon responded to requests for comment after the publication of this story. Perkon said the photo of him in a Nerdify T-shirt (see screenshot above) was taken after a startup event in San Francisco, where he volunteered to act as a photo model to help friends with their project.
“I have no business or other relations to Nerdify or any other ventures in that space,” Mr. Perkon said in an email response. “As for Vadim Lobov, I worked for Venture Capital arm at Synergy until 2013 as well as his business school project in the UK, that didn’t get off the ground, so the company related to this was made dormant. Then Synergy kindly provided sponsorship for my Russian Film Week event that I created and ran until 2022 in the U.K., an event that became the biggest independent Russian film festival outside of Russia. Since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 I closed the festival down.”
“I have had no business with Vadim Lobov since 2021 (the last film festival) and I don’t keep track of his endeavours,” Perkon continued. “As for Alexey Pokatilo, we are university friends. Our business relationship has ended after the concierge service Awesome Technologies didn’t work out, many years ago.”
I’ve had meetings with Filip Perkon and Alexey Pokatilo, never thought they were part of a Russian intelligence network but got the distinct impression that they were the sort of people who would do anything for money. Perkon brought up how eugenics would be beneficial (during our second interaction) and how slavic genes are innately superior! Needless to say didn’t want to buy anything these 2 were selling…
Is Livingston Research one of the biggest employer in Ukraine? Based on LinkedIn Recruiter Pro search they appear to have over 5000 employees.
When was this ‘Livingston Research’ founded? How old is it exactly? Less than ten years?
From the story: “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.”
Sorry. Wasn’t clear on if it had been under a different company name prior to Livingston, or if it had been Livingston the whole time (since 2009).
Looks like Krebs has exposed a Russian spying ring that has been active in Europe for many years. The fact that they were criminals is a feature not a bug for the Russian secret services.
“Krebs has exposed a Russian spying ring that has been active in America and Europe for many years.”
Fixed that for you
Alex Pokatilo has stolen the identity of a real hedge fund called Two Sigma that has operations in New York and London, I wonder if they mind Pokatilo stealing their company name. Pokatilo formed Two Sigma Solutions LTD in the UK and then there’s the real Two Sigma which is a $60 billion dollar fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Sigma
Wonder if Filip Perkon was involved in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess. He seems to be a spy working for Russian intelligence on both sides of the Atlantic.
What part in the story says that Filip Perkon is a Russian spy? Why are you posting such defaming things about someone you don’t even know?
Based on reporting by Brian Krebs and The Guardian it is pretty easy to come to the conclusion that Filip Perkon was working to further the interests of the Russian government.
Filip Perkon is likely a Russian spy working for the SVR similar to Anna Chapman. This cultural promotion activities in the UK on behalf of Russia are hallmark intelligence operations to try and recruit sympathizers. Russian Film Week, Golden Unicorn Awards, etc… Etc..
Perkon is a rather odd last name for a Russian.
Filip Perkon seems more like a shameless self-promoter with ambitions of being a Russian spy than an actual Russian spy. I doubt the GRU or SVR would risk using such larping interlopers for real intelligence operations.
Have you seen the sort of spies Russian intelligence is using these days? People hired from Telegram, etc? Russia is not spoiled for choice when it comes to spies so I’d not put it past Russian intelligence agencies from using a shameless-self promoting larper like Filip Perkon for their ends.
Look at all the people who have been outed as being russian spies or sabotage agents in the last few years.
There are levels to intel ops. People outside the bureau are expendable tools.
Getting them to believe they’re doing important things is part of it.
When they get burned, they are merely criminals who knew the risks.
Filip Perkon is close with Kirill Makharinsky (son of billionaire Leonid Makharinsky) who is the founder of edtech app Enki (whcih Perkon is invested in). I2BF Global Ventures the VC fund Krebs mentions that invested in Alexey Pokatilo’s Litero.ai is invested in Enki too.
I have suspected Perkon was Polish and not Russian.
How has Vadim Lobov not been sanctioned by the UK government? Synergy University is clearly building armed drones to kill Ukrainians and Vadim Lobov clearly has Synergy University entities currently operating in UK as per company house (entities operated from the apartment of Filip Perkon)? So this seems like a grave oversight on the part of the British government.
Brian Krebs outing a Russian spy ring…. Didn’t have that on my bingo card for 2025! Sure hope sanctions and arrests will be following.
Slava Ukraini!
w/r
Giles
Synergy University also had the first course curriculum teaching the development of UAVs. https://patriot.synergy.ru/news/fakultet_bespilotnyh_tekhnologij
The EMBA’s Synergy University is promoting looks like a diploma mill where you can pay and get an MBA that you can show off without spending the time learning anything. https://synergydubai.ae/programmes/business-school/synergy-executive-mba
It’s as if someone asked a comic book villain to build a scam school.
Fun Fact: That first article was published just the day before Putin’s Chef was **accidentally** ejected from his Embraer Legacy.
El Señor Putín is desperate relying on these clowns. They going to need to write a lot of essay soon because price of OIL going down in 2026 amigos. Viva la libertard carajo!
Brian Krebs who has been accused by many including The New York Times of doxxing has done it again! With almost no evidence he has taken private individuals who don’t have any criminal record and acting as judge, jury and executioner Krebs has made life difficult for them.
Is this justice? And the peanut gallery cheers him on building on hysteria.
You can all say this is done without anti-russia bias but anyone who understands how justice actually works would know this is not it.
If Krebs had taken the time to speak to Alex or Filip he’d know what he’s written is far from the truth.
Tovarish, Krebs hasn’t published their addresses.
The New York Times is the most hilarious kettle calling the pot black, it has engaged in doxxing many, many times.
The individuals named are on public record as owners / office holders of the named companies. It is completely normal to document the public actions of companies, and its completely normal to document when chains of companies have the same owners.
I do understand that investigative journalism isn’t exactly a profession in Russia.
Well it’s a profession that results in flying off a rooftop anyhow.
You really are evil. My original reply to this comment yesterday, involved falling out of open windows. But I thought nah, better keep it on topic and deleted it. Then you come along and say it anyway! Roflmfao. :))
Great minds and great potatoes.
Alexey Pokatilo is an owner of Pass the Keys a UK company that manages thousands of rental properties in the UK and US that they list on Airbnb and other platforms. The founders of Pass the Keys are Alex Lyakhotskiy and Zoe Vu who went to London Business School with Alexey Pokatilo.
It occurs to me that it would be very useful for a Russian spy to have access to thousands of rental properties they can use to receive packages and use as safe houses… I’ve had my suspicions about Alexey Pokatilo before I read your illuminating investigation.
Alexander Lyakhotskiy and Alexey Pokatilo are very good friends.
Hmm.. Surprised to see Michael Mayernick was not mentioned in this. Filip Perkon’s Russian disinformation tool TweetSqad was co-created by Michael Mayernick. Filip Perkon and Alexey Pokatilo came to to California to meet with Michael Mayernick before the photo in question at the startup event was taken. Michael Mayernick and Filip Perkon are long time collaborators.
“The core motivation – specifically when it comes to Twitter – is that it’s very ephemeral, and things go by quickly; it’s very difficult to catch every single tweet from the people you support,” said creator Michael Mayernick. “‘Is there anything on my feed that I should be retweeting to show support for what my friends are doing?’ I found that friends wanted me to help them do that, but it was very hard to manage all that. The current system is clunky, and people oftentimes end up having to email you to request a retweet.
Mayernick (who’s also the cofounder of DC-/Palo Alto-based Spinnakr) built TweetSquad with the primary desire to support friends on Twitter. He was frustrated by the plain fact that he couldn’t read every one of his friends’ tweets (obviously, since your Twitter feed is an ongoing stream of consciousness), but more importantly, that there was no way for him to know whether he missed out on a really important update. Through TweetSquad, he can simply join a brand’s/a friend’s squad, and those important tweets can automatically be shared through his account. “It provides a way to be connected to the people around you that doesn’t require checking in with people and setting up custom Twitter lists,” he said.”
Evidence: https://web.archive.org/web/20151122191900/http://tech.co/spinnakr-michael-mayernicks-new-project-tweetsquad-can-improve-your-twitter-click-through-rate-nearly-20x-2014-07
Funny to see someone talking up a spamming tool so passionately. Like anyone wants to see a bunch of spam tweets.
Robert Skidelsky a peer in the House of Lords was under the spell of Filip Perkon. He served as a director of the Synergy UK companies and opened many doors for Filip Perkon.
Filip Perkon was an “embassy kid” which means his parents worked for the Russian government.
Alexey Pokatilo is telling porkie pies.
Filip Perkon and Vadim Lobov helped arrange the The Oliver Stone Putin Interviews.
LSESU Russian Business & Culture Society (RBCS) should be disbanded. The dodgy stuff the students have been involved in are too numerous to list.