Organizers and founders

Kovel Vladimir Nikolaevich

Kovel Vladimir Nikolaevich

Born on November 20, 1988

Citizen of Belarus. Address of residence in Ukraine: Kyiv, 34-A Evgeniya Konovaltsa Street, apartment 18 (95). Address of residence in Poland: Warsaw,

To be confirmed... Phone numbers: +380933238888, +380983238888 Until 2017, he lived in Minsk. In 2017, he moved to Kyiv and started a business with his partners. In 2022, he moved to Warsaw, where he still lives today.

Vrublevsky, Evgeny Alexandrovich

Vrublevsky, Evgeny Alexandrovich

Born on June 25, 1988

Citizen of Belarus. Lived in Minsk until 2018. In 2018, he moved to Kyiv and started a business with his partners.

In 2022, he moved to Warsaw, where he still lives today. Phone: +375291566428

Kazaryan Pavel Ashotovich

Kazaryan Pavel Ashotovich

Born on December 20, 1977

Citizen of Ukraine. Address: Kiev, Perova Blvd. 25, apt. 72, m. Kiev, Raduzhnaya St. 13, apt. 230 Telephones: 0992219999, 0958988584 [email protected]

Previously convicted, was wanted.

In 2019, Vladimir Nikolaevich Kovel, Evgeny Alexandrovich Vrublevsky, and Pavel Ashotovich Kazaryan founded Columbus Auto Trade (Columbus Shipping), a company that officially imported cars from the United States to order. In reality, the aforementioned trio came up with a cunning plan to fraudulently obtain money from gullible citizens. The atmosphere in the company's office resembled a fraudulent call center with flip charts and a ship's bell, the ringing of which signaled the closing of another mammoth deal. They mainly hired young people and students, who were quickly trained in the craft, and the young "salespeople" deftly fed lies to naive citizens. The result of the office's five years of activity was hundreds of defrauded citizens, as evidenced by numerous reviews from Columb Trade customers.

Photo with fraudsters. Ukraine, 2019.

Photo with fraudsters. Ukraine, 2019.

Deception in importing cars from the USA. Columbus Trade is the leader in the car scam market.

The photo shows the first team of the Kyiv office in 2019. The scammers confidently promised customers to purchase and deliver a car from the US at a price significantly lower than the market value in Ukraine, guaranteeing full responsibility at all stages of the purchase, delivery, and registration of the car. A contract is signed with the customer and a deposit is made. After winning the car at auction, the customer was sent an invoice for payment — but the details pointed to another company in the US controlled by the scammers. In fact, you don't pay the auction or the Ukrainian company from the contract, but transfer funds to the account of an unknown American company with which you have no legal relationship.

Columb Trade office workers: from car delivery delays to scams

The customer was treated with great tact and courtesy until the moment the victim made the payment, after which everything changed. The phone was answered less and less frequently, and force majeure situations, downtime, delays, additional costs, and payments arose, about which the customer had not been warned. In the best-case scenario, the customer will get their car back in six months with an additional cost of $2,000-3,000; in the worst-case scenario, they will be left without a car altogether. More than 100 people have not received their cars in the five years that the scammers have been operating. Columbus Trade has deceived people by simply not delivering the cars they paid for under false pretences. How is this possible, you may ask, don't people check contracts and read the terms and conditions? No, the scammers are so good at gaining people's trust that they let their guard down. The main target audience is gullible citizens who are brazenly lied to by managers who abuse their trust in order to get their hands on their money.

Video report about Columbus Trade scammers.