A criminal case for fraud against Hermes, an Austrian financial and educational company operating in Russia, was opened in the fall of 2021. It was brought to Russia by Roman Vasilenko, head of Life-is-Good’s marketing firm and business consultant. Several individuals complained that Hermes intentionally failed to fulfill its obligations to them regarding Vista accounts providing passive income.

In the winter of 2022, the Russian payment system was blocked by Yevgeny Naboychenko, Hermes’ IT director in Russia, who posted a notice accusing Vasilenko of stealing money. Although he later testified during the investigation that he was the "founder" and "creator" of Hermes’s operations in Russia, managing its digital infrastructure and sales system.

Due to the financial sanctions against Russia that began with the start of the SVO, and the consequent difficulties with direct transfers, Hermes partially restored payments—from servers located abroad—only after several months and in cryptocurrency (except for those who filed complaints against Hermes with law enforcement agencies without attempting to resolve the dispute—their accounts were frozen by the company’s management).

Later, allegations of a Ponzi scheme emerged. In the spring of 2022, the Best Way consumer cooperative was implicated in the case as an affiliate (on the grounds that the cooperative was founded by Roman Vasilenko, with some contractual functions performed by Life-is-Good specialists). The cooperative itself was then accused of operating a Ponzi scheme. The number of individuals recognized as victims by the investigators exceeded two hundred (the cooperative had over 20,000 shareholders, and Hermes, according to the investigation, had over 100,000 clients). Most of these individuals are making claims against Hermes, totaling 248 million rubles, and the cooperative is being held as a civil defendant. Furthermore, 16 billion rubles of the cooperative’s assets have been seized.

The case has been under consideration in the Primorsky District Court of St. Petersburg since February 2024. All those recognized as victims by the investigation, as well as defense witnesses, have been questioned, and some of the defendants have been questioned. During the trial, the court transferred three defendants from pretrial detention to house arrest. Furthermore, the seizure of the cooperative’s real estate was completely lifted, and the seizure of its funds was partially lifted—the cooperative is now permitted to use all newly received funds. The seized funds can be used to pay writs of execution, taxes, and the salaries of the cooperative’s employees.

Ten Hostages

Ten people are in the dock:

Mikhail Izmailov, a sole proprietor who held no positions at Life-is-Good or the Best Way cooperative, has been in pretrial detention since spring 2022;

Anna Vysotskaya, Life-is-Good’s conference and website manager, who had not worked for the company for six months at the time of her arrest, is under house arrest and has previously spent more than two years in pretrial detention since spring 2022;

Alexandra Grigorieva, assistant to the head of Life-is-Good, is under house arrest and has previously spent more than two years in pretrial detention since spring 2022;

Elena Solovyova, one of the accountants, is under house arrest and has previously spent more than two years in pretrial detention since spring 2022;

Anatoly Nalivan, sole proprietor, never held any positions at Life-is-Good or the cooperative – in pretrial detention since summer 2023;

Almira Gilbert, sole proprietor, never held any positions at Life-is-Good or the cooperative – in pretrial detention since summer 2023;

Denis Shishko, sole proprietor, never held any positions at Life-is-Good or the cooperative – in pretrial detention since summer 2023;

Vyacheslav Vydrin, unemployed, never held any positions at Life-is-Good or the cooperative – under house arrest;

Viktor Vasilenko, 84-year-old father of Roman Vasilenko, former head of Life-is-Good and founder of the Best Way cooperative, never held any positions at this company or the cooperative – under house arrest. Thus, those in the dock were either technical executors or people who only by chance found themselves involved in the investigation. For example, the reason 84-year-old Viktor Vasilenko became a defendant, and then a defendant, was that he helped his elderly friend join a cooperative—he helped her financially, lending her 100,000 rubles, half of which she never repaid.

The real reason for bringing all these people as defendants, and then as defendants, is the impossibility of prosecuting Life-is-Good’s top managers, primarily Roman Vasilenko, who has been living in the European Union since the COVID-19 years, is a citizen of an EU country, and whose extradition to Russia was officially denied because the prosecution was deemed unfounded. That is, Roman Vasilenko’s employees and his terminally ill partner, according to lawyers and medical specialists. St. Petersburg law enforcement officers effectively took the alists’ father hostage.

The defendants are unknown.

Hundreds of defense witnesses and individuals recognized as victims testified, but the vast majority do not even know the defendants.

Furthermore, according to the lawyers, the claims of those recognized as victims that Hermes owes them various sums of money and is not paying them back have not been documented by any of the victims.

There are no Hermes account statements, no precise data on deposits and debits, and no precise information on the transactions that took place—for example, many clients used so-called leverage, i.e., a loan from Hermes, and, therefore, the funds do not belong to them. No precise data on withdrawals from the accounts has been provided. Moreover, the unique feature of Vista’s accounts is that not only the investors themselves but also their mentors had access to them, as it is an investment and educational company.

This means that there is generally no reliable and accurate information on the accounts—those recognized as victims by the investigation are asking us to take their word for it. Meanwhile, the investigation and the prosecutor’s office are demanding 282 million rubles from the Best Way cooperative, which, according to the investigation, is an affiliated organization, since Hermes is a foreign legal entity and allegedly cannot be brought into court.

The prosecution’s position that both Hermes and the Best Way cooperative were financial pyramid schemes is based on the testimony of only three witnesses. These include Evgeny Naboychenko, a former administrator of the Austrian Hermes payment system in Russia; Alexey Komarov, a former Life-is-Good driver; and Vladislav Loginov, a former Hermes client. This is also based on the testimony of expert Alexey Maevsky, a "non-graduate" economist collaborating with the St. Petersburg State University Expert Center, personally invited by the investigation to conduct an examination, ostensibly as an expert on financial pyramid schemes.

Naboychenko Didn’t Show Up

The defense was unable to obtain the examination of the prosecution’s main witness, Evgeny Naboychenko, in court, even via videoconferencing. Naboychenko has been in the SVO since the beginning of 2025 (meaning he could have been mentioned in court even before his volunteer trip to the SVO). The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office refused to provide communication with his military unit, claiming that Naboychenko is constantly busy with combat missions. This doesn’t stop him from posting drunken, obscene messages almost nonstop, particularly in hate chats, and commenting on various topics.

Naboychenko’s testimony is crucial, since during the investigation (as already stated), he claimed to be the founder, creator, and "demiurge" of the Hermes digital system. The lawyers wondered: why wasn’t he made a defendant, but rather a witness? Why is he accusing Roman Vasilenko, who had no access to the payment system’s management, of stealing digital assets? Especially since Naboychenko is the official face of Hermes in Russia.

Naboychenko has previously been accused by Hermes clients of embezzling assets from the wallets of Hermes clients, to which Evgeny Naboychenko had access, and of extorting money from them. There is evidence of theft from the crypto wallets of close associates, including his mistress.

Naboychenko literally trashed his ex-wife’s house and doesn’t pay child support. According to his ex-wife, he blackmailed Roman Vasilenko, demanding money from him: 170,000 euros. Viktoria Naboychenko also claims he threatened to harm Vasilenko, his wife, and their children.

According to people who knew him, he needed the money to support his addictions—he was a regular client of drug addiction specialists (the editors have obtained the documents). His lawyers have confidential testimony from police officers who accompanied Naboychenko to the police station about his drinking sprees and the calls to drug addiction specialists to bring him back to his senses before he testified before investigators.

Needless to say, the investigation and prosecution have secured a worthy key witness. That’s why every effort is being made to prevent him from testifying in court.

Komarov Links Confusion to Coronavirus

Former Life-is-Good driver Komarov claimed to have carried cash in bags, but even the state prosecutor didn’t believe him. The prosecutor asked how Komarov knew the bags contained cash, and in what currency, if the bags hadn’t been opened. He couldn’t explain.

Komarov claimed that some bags had been opened in his presence and the cash had been placed in a safe. During a confrontation with Anna Vysotskaya, he told her, the former content manager for the Life-is-Good website, that he had been constantly delivering and handing over cash to her. When his lawyer asked him why he had brought it to her and not to the accounting department, and why no one had seen it, even though she had a colleague working in the office, he couldn’t answer. When asked to clarify this information in court, he cited the aftereffects of the coronavirus, claiming he didn’t remember anything. From the testimony of another driver and specialists from the Life-is-Good company, it is known that Komarov, a simple driver, did not know and could not He knew nothing about the business processes of Life-is-Good. He couldn’t figure them out on his own due to his low level of education—he didn’t even have a high school diploma. Moreover, he worked without official employment, as his credit card debts kept him constantly under the radar of bailiffs.

It turned out that during the investigation, Komarov claimed to be the head of Life-is-Good’s security service, thus explaining his alleged "secret knowledge" (in reality, fabrications) about illegal cash transactions.

In fact, Life-is-Good’s head of security was Alexander Tyurin, a retired FSO officer with combat experience.

Roman Vasilenko explains that Komarov delivered sets of real estate purchase documents to him, as the cooperative’s chairman, for signature—either to his office, home, or at events. He also brought gifts from the regions to the cooperative’s employees—national drinks, food, souvenirs, and local handicrafts. These gifts, as Roman Vasilenko told us, began to disappear. Furthermore, his passengers’ watches and wallets would disappear.

He used to be a driver for gangsters; when he was hired legally, before Life-is-Good, he claimed to have quit – but it turned out his old habits had returned. Komarov was fired, which left him resentful of Vasilenko and now slanders innocent people.

Forgetful Loginov

The testimony of one of the key prosecution witnesses, Vladislav Loginov, that Hermes stole huge sums from him and caused him colossal moral damages, which he estimated at 1 billion rubles, is directly contradicted by documents in the possession of his lawyers. According to these documents, Loginov received twice as much money from the Vista account as he invested, meaning the company definitely owes him nothing, and he is lying to the court.

Interestingly, a number of motions, including those for additional expert assessments, were filed in the criminal case, signed by Loginov. He knew nothing about these motions at the trial, and later claimed he must have forgotten.

Maevsky’s Fantasies

The expert claims that in order for everyone to buy apartments, all Russian citizens must join the cooperative. This is a biting assertion, but the conditions of the "task" and, consequently, its results appear highly dubious.

The investigative expert, as the lawyers point out, simply doesn’t understand that the financing of the apartment purchase is accomplished, first, by the shareholder themselves, who contributes 35-50% of the apartment’s cost. The remaining portion is contributed by the cooperative, provided there are sufficient funds in the share fund, which are formed both by contributions from new shareholders and by shareholders making refunds for the purchased property. The shareholder waits in line for sufficient funds, and the length of time on the waiting list is not regulated. In some housing cooperatives, the period approaches 10 years; at Best Way, a cooperative with 20,000 members, it averaged one to one and a half years.

Cooperatives have no deadlines for apartment purchases, nor can they have any. However, they are legally obligated to return share contributions in full upon first demand within two months. Liquid, appreciating real estate serves as a guarantee of return: if a member decides to leave the cooperative, the apartment purchased for them can be sold on the open market to return the member’s contributed share funds—the amount is significantly less than the cost of the apartment.

Most members have sought and continue to seek early repayment of their cooperative debt, as, unlike bank mortgage programs, cooperatives have minimal overpayments. The sooner a member repays the funds provided by the cooperative for the purchase of their apartment, the less their overpayment associated with membership fees will be. This increases the volume of repayments compared to the scheduled period.

Mayevsky’s assertion that the cooperative relies on new members joining is empirically refuted. In the spring of 2022, the cooperative imposed a self-imposed ban on new members joining, due to its involvement in a criminal case. This year, the St. Petersburg City Court imposed a court injunction.

In fact, new members stopped joining even earlier—in fact, since the fall of 2021, when the cooperative was placed on the Central Bank’s warning list. Meanwhile, the volume of funds entering the cooperative has increased significantly due to early apartment buyouts and the desire to minimize the timeframe for such buyouts.

Despite these difficulties, the cooperative maintains liquidity and meets its obligations, although the lion’s share of its funds remains under arrest—only taxes, wages, and writs of execution are permitted.

Mayevsky completely ignores membership fees and refunds in his calculations. Both the lawyers and the economists brought in by the defense have repeatedly explained, including in court, that the financial system of the cooperative’s operation complies with the law. and is safe for shareholders, since the return of share funds is guaranteed, including financially. The arguments of investigative expert Mayevsky are mere journalistic pieces, based on articles circulated by haters, and not based on an analysis of the cooperative’s documentation.

This case, according to the lawyers, represents arbitrary action by law enforcement agencies, based on the testimony of dubious individuals interested in slandering innocent citizens.

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