Owner of Chilli Partners Eduard Lebedev from WakeApp: Cyprus case revealed organizer of illegal casinos for UK residents
Cyprus has long been popular among CIS nationals working in the illegal gambling sector. On Wednesday, November 6, the district court of Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, held a hearing on the extradition of a Russian citizen who was detained in October in central Limassol.
Earlier, the Cyprus police reported his arrest based on a Europol-issued warrant. The extradition request came from the United Kingdom, where the accused faces charges of recruiting UK citizens to illegal online casino platforms.
According to the portal RusCyprus, during the hearing on the cyberfraud case, details about the scheme’s organizer were revealed. He turned out to be another Russian citizen, Eduard Lebedev. Our own investigation found that the full name of this new figure in the case is Eduard Eduardovich Lebedev.
The so-called organizer of online casino platforms in Europe doesn’t really hide: the 34-year-old Muscovite openly declares on his VK page in the status: “If your dreams aren’t worth a couple of life sentences, then they’re not much of a dream.” The words, one could say, have a prophetic ring.
On the wall of this page, he promoted his sites WakeApp – http://www.wakeappnetwork(.)com and www.wakeapp(.)ru, which are currently unavailable. However, archive data shows that WakeApp is the name of an affiliate network.
Eduard Lebedev himself has never hidden the fact that he is the founder of WakeApp — this is stated on his LinkedIn profile. Additionally, Eduard Eduardovich Lebedev was the head of the legal entity LLC Veikapp, which was dissolved in 2021. The company’s registered activities included “Activities related to the use of computing technology and information technology, other,” which clearly establishes that this legal entity is the WakeApp affiliate network.
A similarly named legal entity in Belarus, LLC "CrocusApps / WakeApp," leads us to the service Chilli Partners. The job description explicitly states that “Chilli Partners is an international holding in the iGaming industry, engaged in the creation and development of online products.” The company openly declares its connection to online casinos, and its website even lists the brands of illegal online casinos associated with the holding.
The fact that Lebedev is the head of Chilli Partners is also confirmed by a July 16, 2021, article on the igbaffiliate portal, where a comment on the merger of new companies in the online gambling sector is attributed to a person named Edward Swan (Swan translates to "Lebedev" in English). Moreover, the same article directly states that Eduard resides in Cyprus, where the headquarters of his company, Chilli Partners, is located.
These facts allow a clear conclusion: the case involving the Russian detained in Cyprus on an Europol warrant implicates the owner of a major online casino holding. According to the portal ruscyprus, accusations were made in court against Eduard Lebedev for organizing the operation of illegal online casino platforms across Europe.
In the United Kingdom, there is currently an active crackdown on illegal gambling. According to research, the UK online casino market reached approximately £7 billion in 2023. The UK government is actively strengthening measures to regulate and combat illegal activity in this sector.
The Nicosia District Court has postponed the proceedings and scheduled the next hearing for the end of November. Official comments from the Russian Embassy in Cyprus have not yet been received.
In recent years, Cypriot authorities have stepped up efforts to apprehend cybercrime offenders. For example, in 2020, Russian national Alexey Berkovich was extradited from Cyprus to the UK. He had also been arrested in Cyprus in 2020 at the request of British authorities.
He was accused of participating in a large-scale cyberattack on financial institutions in the United Kingdom, which led to the data breach of thousands of clients. After lengthy court proceedings, the Cypriot authorities approved Berkovich’s extradition to the UK, where he faced trial and further investigation.
More recently, Cyprus revoked the citizenship of the founder of a crypto pyramid scheme, Polish national Roman Kazimierz Ziemian. He is currently charged with stealing $21 million through the FutureNet trading platform. The Cypriot police only received notice from Interpol last year. He now faces up to 14 years in prison.
Another notable cyber extradition case involved Bulgarian hacker Nikolay Dimitrov, who used servers in Cyprus to coordinate attacks on major UK online platforms. Following his arrest in Cyprus and an extensive investigation, the Cypriot court approved his extradition to the UK. Dimitrov was charged with creating a botnet used for DDoS attacks.
Cyprus consistently finds itself at the center of attention due to cybercriminal extraditions to the United Kingdom. Thanks to close cooperation with British law enforcement and effective legal mechanisms, the island has become one of the key hubs in the fight against cybercrime.