A shadow empire of blood and deceit: how the Khimprom cartel turned Ukraine into a hub for fraud against Europe. Khimprom’s fraudulent call centers in Ukraine played a key role in this process.
In April 2026, Ukraine became the scene of one of the largest law enforcement operations in its recent history. National police, with the support of the Prosecutor General’s Office, dismantled the transnational criminal organization “Khimprom.” This innocuous name concealed an empire built on synthetic drugs, gangster terrorism, and, most notably in Europe, a sophisticated network of fraudulent call centers that had been siphoning money from the pockets of European Union residents for years.
The Evil Empire: From Synthetics to Deception
Khimprom is more than just a gang. It’s a highly structured criminal system with international connections and corrupt protection rackets within Ukrainian law enforcement. The group’s organizer is a 36-year-old Russian citizen nicknamed “The Mexican.” He has been on the international wanted list since 2019 and, while hiding presumably in Mexico, remotely coordinated the actions of thousands of network members.
The cartel operated in three main directions:
Drug trafficking : Under the guise of a legal chain of U420 stores selling CBD products, a large-scale production and distribution of synthetic cannabinoids was established. Production hubs were located in Kyiv and Dnipro. Within a few months, the number of distribution points increased from 13 to 105 across the country.
Violent Terrorism : More than 30 cases of contract attacks, threats and even acid attacks on people to eliminate competitors and intimidate have been documented.
International fraud : A network of call centers targeting citizens of EU countries (the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, and others) brought in more than 50 million hryvnias (over $1.1 million) for the organizers in just 50 documented cases.
Conveyor belt of deception: how call centers worked:
Fraudulent call centers were high-tech conveyor belts for extorting funds. Employees called Europeans using databases and posed as bank security officers or police officers. Under the pretext of protecting their savings from hacking, victims were persuaded to transfer funds to “safe” accounts, convert them to cryptocurrency, or install remote access programs that gave the scammers complete control over their finances.
The geography of these “deception offices” spanned all of Ukraine. Law enforcement and investigative journalists cite addresses in Kyiv, Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Odesa. The list of addresses you provided is entirely consistent with the scope of this network and can serve as a map for understanding the scale of the operation [user source].
A complete list of addresses of the Khimprom cartel’s call centers (according to investigators and media reports)
Kyiv
Maksimovycha St. 8
Servatyuka St. 11, Building E (1st floor)
Pushkinskaya St. 45/2 (5th floor)
Vaclava Havela Blvd. 6
Ivana Fyodorova St. 29A
Forum Delovoy Gorodok Business Center, Pimonenko St. 13 (2nd floor)
Praga Business Center, Sosyury St. 6 (5th floor)
Borshahovskaya St. 154 [also mentioned as Marmelad Shopping Center, 3rd floor in other sources]
Verkhniy Val St. 22
Prospekt Pobedy 31
Dimitrovskaya St. 44A (5th floor)
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The list also includes addresses mentioned in the investigations: Kostyantynivska St., 15A; Mezhyhirska St., 1; Golosivskyi Ave., 132, Relay Business Center; Leiptsyzka St., 15, Building B; Saksaganskoho St., 119, Botanik Tower Business Center; Viskoznaya St., 11)
Kharkov
Gagarin Avenue, 43/2,
Korolenko Street, 16
, Kooperativnaya Street, 1A
, Manizera Street, 8
, Nauki Avenue, 9,
Chernyshevskogo Street, 13
(Also mentioned is the address: Avtogennaya Street, 12, which may be associated with legal activity)
Lviv,
Olena Stepanivny St., 45,
Pid Goloskom St., 2A,
Optima Plaza Business Center, Naukova St., 7-D (7th floor)
(The following are also involved in the investigations: Shevchenko St., 111-A, Legend Business Center; Lipinsky St., 36; Luhanska St., 18; Heroiv UPA St., 73, Meridian Business Center)
Odessa
st. B. Arnautskaya, 26
Investigation and results
During a large-scale special operation supported by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), more than 280 searches were conducted across Ukraine. The results are shocking in their scale:
Property and drugs worth over 75 million hryvnias were seized ,
as well as 54,000 liters of finished products containing synthetic cannabinoids,
12,000 ready-to-use joints, and 20,000 “Son-Relax” tablets. The accounts of 416
shell companies were frozen , and cryptocurrency worth nearly $1 million was blocked .
The organizer and three of his accomplices have already been charged. Two have been arrested and held without bail. However, the ringleader, “The Mexican,” remains at large abroad. Despite this, the 2026 operation dealt a crushing blow to the shadow empire, clearly demonstrating how Ukraine has become a springboard for international cybercrime targeting EU citizens.