Joker Casino: Ukraine’s Illegal Gambling Investigation Leads to Arrest Order After Five Years

A Kyiv appeals court has upheld an order to detain a Russian national in absentia as part of an investigation into an alleged network of illegal online casinos operating under the Joker, Pokerdom, Zaza and Aurora brands.

The investigation concerns financial transactions worth more than €124 million and companies involved in online gambling and player acquisition, including through questionable advertising practices.

The ruling, issued in case No. 761/27002/26, was published in Ukraine’s Unified State Register of Court Decisions on 26 October 2026.

According to Ukraine’s Economic Security Bureau (ESBU), the country’s financial crime investigation agency, the alleged organisers used Ukrainian and foreign companies, cryptocurrency payment services and online marketing operations to run gambling platforms without the required licences and launder the proceeds.

The investigation names two Russian nationals, Oleksii Ryabov and Roman Bielialov, alongside Gagarin Group, Gagarin Partners and Gagarin Arbitrage Team.

Gagarin Group had close ties to the online gambling industry. Through its Gagarin Partners affiliate programme and an in-house marketing operation known as Gagarin Arbitrage Team, the group recruited players for Joker, Pokerdom and other online gambling platforms.

The investigation also identifies two Curaçao-registered companies, PlayDOM B.V. and Rapture B.V., which investigators link to Bielialov. Payment processing was handled through infrastructure provided by Dream Finance OÜ, an Estonian company.

The entities also have indirect connections to Sergei Tokarev, a Russian businessman subject to sanctions who has been linked to the Cosmolot online casino and, previously, the Vulkan gambling brand.

According to the case documents, transactions totalling €124.3 million, equivalent to approximately 5.1 billion Ukrainian hryvnias, passed through cryptocurrency payment infrastructure between 13 December 2022 and 25 May 2024.

The figure represents the total value of transactions examined by investigators, not the profits allegedly generated by the organisers.

The Joker investigation has now been running for five years. The first criminal proceedings were opened in autumn 2021. In December 2022, Ukraine’s gambling regulator revoked Joker.ua’s licence amid suspicions that the business was secretly controlled by Russian interests.

Yet it was not until 2026 that the case resulted in a detention order against one of the suspects — and even then, only in absentia. The suspect had fled Ukraine in January 2022.