A sprawling tutorial dishonest community turbocharged by Google Adverts that has generated practically $25 million in income has curious ties to a Kremlin-connected oligarch whose Russian college builds drones for Russia’s battle in opposition to Ukraine.
The Nerdify homepage.
The hyperlink between essay mills and Russian assault drones might sound unbelievable, however understanding it begins with a easy query: How does a human-intensive tutorial 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 tutorial dishonest companies — e.g., “assist with examination on-line” or “time period paper on-line” — and also you’re prone to encounter web sites with the phrases “nerd” or “geek” in them, comparable to thenerdify[.]com and geekly-hub[.]com. With a easy request despatched through textual content message, you’ll be able to rent their tutors to assist with any project.
These nerdy and geeky-branded web sites often cite their “honor code,” which emphasizes they don’t condone tutorial dishonest, is not going to write your time period papers for you, and can solely supply assist and recommendation for patrons. However in accordance with This Isn’t Positive, 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 Positive creator Joseph Thibault. “The honour 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 put up reveals him buying a 3-page paper with the Nerdify service.
Google prohibits adverts that “allow dishonest conduct.” But, a sprawling international essay and homework dishonest community run underneath the Nerdy manufacturers has quietly purchased its approach to the highest of Google searches – reserving revenues of just about $25 million by means of 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 obtained shut down, the group behind the corporate would kind a brand new entity with a front-person (sometimes a younger Ukrainian lady), begin a brand new adverts account together with a brand new web site and area title (often with “nerdy” within the model), and resume operating Google adverts for a similar set of key phrases.
UK corporations belonging to the group which were shut down by Google Adverts since Jan 2025 embody:
–Proglobal Options LTD (marketed nerdifyit[.]com);
–AW Tech Restricted (marketed thenerdify[.]com);
–Geekly Options Ltd (marketed geekly-hub[.]com).
At present lively Google Adverts accounts for the Nerdify manufacturers embody:
-OK Advertising and marketing LTD (promoting geekly-hub[.]web), 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 at the very least 2009, working a paper-mill enterprise referred to as Livingston Analysis alongside Alexander Korsukov, who’s listed as an proprietor. In accordance 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 method 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 scholar group referred to as Russian Enterprise Week whereas the 2 have been classmates on the London Faculty of Economics. In accordance with the Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev, Perkon’s beginning 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 software referred to as the Russian Diplomatic On-line Membership, which Perkon mentioned 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 finally led to the UK leaving the European Union, the Russian embassy in London used this spam tweeting software 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 firms 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 training supplier. Synergy has greater than 35,000 college students, and sells T-shirts with patriotic slogans comparable 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 contains a wall-sized portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin within the pop-art model of Andy Warhol. For a lot of 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 instructional establishment, a whole bunch of worldwide college students inform a special 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 often and made me imagine I used to be in protected arms. Nonetheless, 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 by any means. My messages are actually ignored, and the identical consultant who as soon as replied immediately now not responds in any respect. Synergy College, how can an establishment in Europe really feel comfy 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, guarantees of simple visa approval, upfront cost necessities, after which silence after visa denials.
Reddit discussions in r/Moscow and r/AskARussian are crammed with warnings. “It’s a rip-off, a diploma mill,” writes one consumer. “They actually promote exams. There was an investigation on Rossiya-1 tv exhibiting college students paying to go 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 at the very least there is no such thing as a proof that an individual with this title ever labored at Nerdify.
Slightly, 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 through textual content message and routing them to freelance writers.
A more in-depth have a look at an early “About Us” web page for Nerdify in The Wayback Machine means that Mr. Perkon was the true co-founder of the corporate: The picture on the prime 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 digital camera is Perkon.
Filip Perkon, prime 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 presently operating 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 companies AltaIR Capital, Yellow Rocks, Good Partnership Capital, and I2BF World Ventures.
In the meantime, Filip Perkon is busy establishing toy rubber duck shops in Miami and in at the very least three areas 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 (through DNS) reveals it is also aiding the Russian authorities in its battle 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, significantly Putin’s daughter, who works with Popova on the training and culture-focused Innopraktika Basis.
The web site bpla.synergy[.]bot, for example, says the corporate is concerned in creating fight drones to assist Russian forces and to evade worldwide sanctions on the availability and re-export of high-tech merchandise.
A screenshot from the web site of synergy,bot reveals the corporate is actively engaged in constructing armed drones for the battle in Ukraine.
KrebsOnSecurity wish to thank the nameless researcher NatInfoSec for his or her help on this investigation.
Replace, Dec. 8, 10:06 a.m. ET: Mr. Pokatilo responded to requests for remark after the publication of this story. Pokatilo mentioned he has no relation to Synergy nor to Mr. Lobov, and that his work with Mr. Perkon ended with the dissolution of Superior Applied sciences.
“I’ve had no involvement in any of his tasks and enterprise actions talked about within the article and he has no involvement in Litero.ai,” Pokatilo mentioned of Perkon.
Mr. Pokatilo mentioned his new firm Litero “doesn’t present contract dishonest companies and is constructed particularly to enhance transparency and tutorial integrity within the age of common use of AI by college students.”
“I’m Ukrainian,” he mentioned in an e-mail. “My shut buddies, colleagues, and a few members of the family proceed to dwell in Ukraine underneath the continued invasion. Any suggestion that I or my firm could also be related in any approach to Russia’s battle efforts is deeply offensive on a private stage and dangerous to the repute of Litero.ai, an organization the place many workforce members are Ukrainian.”
