How Russia’s Largest Non-public College is Linked to a $25M Essay Mill – Krebs on Safety

A sprawling educational dishonest community turbocharged by Google Adverts that has generated almost $25 million in income has curious ties to a Kremlin-connected oligarch whose Russian college builds drones for Russia’s struggle in opposition to Ukraine.

The Nerdify homepage.

The hyperlink between essay mills and Russian assault drones might sound inconceivable, however understanding it begins with a easy query: How does a human-intensive educational dishonest service keep related in an period when college students can merely ask AI to jot down their time period papers? The reply – recasting the enterprise as an AI firm – is simply the most recent chapter in a narrative of many rebrands that hyperlink the operation to Russia’s largest non-public college.

Search in Google for any phrases associated to educational dishonest companies — e.g., “assist with examination on-line” or “time period paper on-line” — and also you’re more likely to encounter web sites with the phrases “nerd” or “geek” in them, corresponding to thenerdify[.]com and geekly-hub[.]com. With a easy request despatched by way of textual content message, you possibly can rent their tutors to assist with any project.

These nerdy and geeky-branded web sites incessantly cite their “honor code,” which emphasizes they don’t condone educational dishonest, is not going to write your time period papers for you, and can solely supply help and recommendation for patrons. However in accordance with This Isn’t Superb, a Substack weblog about contract dishonest and essay mills, the Nerdify model of internet sites will fortunately ignore that mantra.

“We examined the short SMS for a value quote,” wrote This Isn’t Superb creator Joseph Thibault. “The consideration code references and platitudes apparently cease on the web site. Inside three minutes, we confirmed {that a} full three-page, plagiarism- and AI-free MLA formatted Argumentative essay could possibly be ours for the low value of $141.”

A screenshot from Joseph Thibault’s Substack submit reveals him buying a 3-page paper with the Nerdify service.

Google prohibits advertisements that “allow dishonest habits.” But, a sprawling international essay and homework dishonest community run underneath the Nerdy manufacturers has quietly purchased its strategy to the highest of Google searches – reserving revenues of just about $25 million by a maze of corporations in Cyprus, Malta and Hong Kong, whereas pitching “tutoring” that delivers completed work that college students can flip in.

When one Nerdy-related Google Adverts account received shut down, the group behind the corporate would kind a brand new entity with a front-person (usually a younger Ukrainian lady), begin a brand new advertisements account together with a brand new web site and area title (normally with “nerdy” within the model), and resume working Google advertisements for a similar set of key phrases.

UK corporations belonging to the group which were shut down by Google Adverts since Jan 2025 embrace:

–Proglobal Options LTD (marketed nerdifyit[.]com);
–AW Tech Restricted (marketed thenerdify[.]com);
–Geekly Options Ltd (marketed geekly-hub[.]com).

At the moment lively Google Adverts accounts for the Nerdify manufacturers embrace:

-OK Advertising and marketing LTD (promoting geekly-hub[.]internet⁩), shaped within the title of Olha Karpenko, a younger Ukrainian lady;
–Two Sigma Options LTD (promoting litero[.]ai), shaped within the title of Olekszij (Alexey) Pokatilo.

Google’s Adverts Transparency web page for present Nerdify advertiser OK Advertising and marketing LTD.

Mr. Pokatilo has been within the essay-writing enterprise since not less than 2009, working a paper-mill enterprise referred to as Livingston Analysis alongside Alexander Korsukov, who’s listed as an proprietor. In line with a prolonged account from a former worker, Livingston Analysis primarily farmed its writing duties out to low-cost employees from Kenya, Philippines, Pakistan, Russia and Ukraine.

Pokatilo moved from Ukraine to the UK in Sept. 2015 and co-founded an organization referred to as Superior Applied sciences, which pitched itself as a means for folks to outsource duties by sending a textual content message to the service’s assistants.

The opposite co-founder of Superior Applied sciences is 36-year-old Filip Perkon, a Swedish man dwelling in London who touts himself as a serial entrepreneur and investor. Years earlier than beginning Superior collectively, Perkon and Pokatilo co-founded a pupil group referred to as Russian Enterprise Week whereas the 2 have been classmates on the London Faculty of Economics. In line with the Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev, Perkon’s start certificates was issued by the Soviet Embassy in Sweden.

Alexey Pokatilo (left) and Filip Perkon at a Fb occasion for startups in San Francisco in mid-2015.

Across the time Perkon and Pokatilo launched Superior Applied sciences, Perkon was constructing a social media propaganda device referred to as the Russian Diplomatic On-line Membership, which Perkon stated would “turbo-charge” Russian messaging on-line. The membership’s publication urged subscribers to put in of their Twitter accounts a third-party app referred to as Tweetsquad that may 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 in the end led to the UK leaving the European Union, the Russian embassy in London used this spam tweeting device to auto-retweet the Russian ambassador’s posts from supporters’ accounts.

Neither Mr. Perkon nor Mr. Pokatilo replied to requests for remark.

A evaluation of companies tied to Mr. Perkon as listed by the enterprise analysis service North Information finds he holds or held director positions in a number of U.Okay. subsidiaries of Synergy, Russia’s largest non-public schooling supplier. Synergy has greater than 35,000 college students, and sells T-shirts with patriotic slogans corresponding to “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 includes a wall-sized portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin within the pop-art fashion of Andy Warhol. For numerous years, Lobov and Perkon co-produced a cross-cultural occasion within the U.Okay. referred to as Russian Movie Week.

Synergy President Vadim Lobov and Filip Perkon, talking at a press convention for Russian Movie Week, a cross-cultural occasion within the U.Okay. co-produced by each males.

Mr. Lobov was considered one of 11 people reportedly hand-picked by the convicted Russian spy Marina Butina to attend the 2017 Nationwide Prayer Breakfast held in Washington D.C. simply two weeks after President Trump’s first inauguration.

Whereas Synergy College promotes itself as Russia’s largest non-public academic establishment, a whole bunch of worldwide college students inform a unique story. On-line critiques from college students paint an image of unkept guarantees: Potential college students from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and different nations paying hundreds prematurely charges for promised examine visas to Russia, solely to have their functions denied with no refunds provided.

“My expertise with Synergy College has been nothing in need of heartbreaking,” reads one such account. “Once I first found the college, their consultant was extraordinarily responsive and keen to help. He communicated incessantly and made me imagine I used to be in secure fingers. Nevertheless, after paying my hard-earned tuition charges, my visa was denied. It’s been over 9 months since that denial, and regardless of their guarantees, I’ve acquired no refund in any way. My messages at the moment are ignored, and the identical consultant who as soon as replied immediately not responds in any respect. Synergy College, how can an establishment in Europe really feel snug exploiting the hopes of Africans who belief you with their life financial savings? This isn’t simply unethical — it’s predatory.”

This sample repeats throughout critiques by multilingual college students from Pakistan, Nepal, India, and numerous African nations — all describing the identical scheme: Enticing on-line advertising and marketing, guarantees of straightforward visa approval, upfront fee necessities, after which silence after visa denials.

Reddit discussions in r/Moscow and r/AskARussian are full of warnings. “It’s a rip-off, a diploma mill,” writes one person. “They actually promote exams. There was an investigation on Rossiya-1 tv displaying college students paying to cross checks.”

The Nerdify web site’s “About Us” web page says the corporate was co-founded by Pokatilo and an American named Brian Mellor. The latter identification appears to have been fabricated, or not less than there isn’t any proof that an individual with this title ever labored at Nerdify.

Reasonably, it seems that the SMS help firm co-founded by Messrs. Pokatilo and Perkon (Superior Applied sciences) fizzled out shortly after its creation, and that Nerdify quickly adopted the method of accepting project requests by way of textual content message and routing them to freelance writers.

A better take a look at an early “About Us” web page for Nerdify in The Wayback Machine means that Mr. Perkon was the actual co-founder of the corporate: The photograph on the high of the web page reveals 4 folks sporting Nerdify T-shirts seated round a desk on a rooftop deck in San Francisco, and the person dealing with the digicam is Perkon.

Filip Perkon, high proper, is pictured sporting a Nerdify T-shirt in an archived copy of the corporate’s About Us web page. Picture: archive.org.

The place are they now? Pokatilo is at the moment working a startup referred to as Litero.Ai, which seems to be an AI-based essay writing service. In July 2025, Mr. Pokatilo acquired pre-seed funding of $800,000 for Litero from an funding program backed by the enterprise capital corporations AltaIR Capital, Yellow Rocks, Good Partnership Capital, and I2BF International Ventures.

In the meantime, Filip Perkon is busy organising toy rubber duck shops in Miami and in not less than three places in the UK. These “Duck World” outlets market themselves as “the world’s largest duck retailer.”

This previous week, Mr. Lobov was in India with Putin’s entourage on a allure tour with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Though Synergy is billed as an academic establishment, a evaluation of the corporate’s sprawling company footprint (by way of DNS) reveals it is also aiding the Russian authorities in its struggle in opposition to Ukraine.

Synergy College President Vadim Lobov (proper) pictured this week in India subsequent to Natalia Popova, a Russian TV presenter identified for her shut ties to Putin’s household, notably Putin’s daughter, who works with Popova on the schooling and culture-focused Innopraktika Basis.

The web site bpla.synergy[.]bot, as an illustration, says the corporate is concerned in growing fight drones to help Russian forces and to evade worldwide sanctions on the availability and re-export of high-tech merchandise.