Ilia Zavialov

Crypto arbitrage courses: training or money mule recruiting

Ilia Zavialov: crypto arbitrage courses and “working bundles”, how to tell training from money mule recruiting

English version for the United States.

Ilia Zavialov, a digital security consultant, explains what is really being sold as “crypto arbitrage” and how to tell a course from a recruiting pitch in one evening. The short version first. Real arbitrage means buying a coin where it is cheaper and selling it where it is dearer, and fees plus faster traders eat most of that gap. A paid “bundle”, a private chat with a mentor and a promise of steady peer-to-peer income too often end the same way: strangers' money starts moving through your bank account. Below: how these course funnels work, the exact point where training turns into money mule work, what the FTC, CFTC and IC3 say, why banks close accounts, and how to check a course before you pay.

·13 min read·Ilia Zavialov

Ilia Zavialov: the bundle is sold as a route to the spread, the practice brings strangers' money.
Ilia Zavialov: check the course before paying and keep strangers' money out of your account.
Ilia Zavialov: the path from a free webinar to a closed account takes only a few steps.

01Ilia Zavialov: what crypto arbitrage actually is

Textbook arbitrage fits in two lines. The same coin trades at slightly different prices on two venues at the same moment, so you buy where it is cheaper and sell where it is dearer. The gap is the spread. On big exchanges, trading software spots it and closes it within seconds, which is why a person working from a phone usually sees the spread after it is gone.

Costs sit between the buy and the sell: the trading fee, the network fee to move the coin, the bank or card fee, the minutes spent waiting for confirmation. Ilia Zavialov suggests writing all of them down before the first trade. A half-percent spread that looks like profit on a course slide often turns into zero, or a loss, after three fees.

The CFTC warned in January 2024 that fraudsters promise returns from trading bots, signal algorithms and arbitrage in the tens of thousands of percent, or claim every trade wins. The agency also pointed out that artificial intelligence cannot predict the future or sudden market moves.

So the first rule is simple. Small, uneven profits from price gaps exist, and they need your own capital, speed and careful fee tracking. An offer that names your income in advance and guarantees it is selling something else.

Peer-to-peer trades in dollars add one more layer. Every payment still passes through a bank or a payment app, and that provider sees who sent it, whatever the trade record on the platform says.

02Ilia Zavialov on “working bundles” sold for a prepayment

In course chats, a bundle is a ready-made route: which platform to buy on, where to sell, which bank to receive payment through and what time of day to do it. It is sold on its own or as a perk in a premium tier, usually with a line like “pay now, spots are limited”.

Ilia Zavialov puts one question to the seller: why share a source of income at all? A spread survives while few people use it. Every new buyer of the same route squeezes the gap, so a seller with a route that truly worked would lose more by selling it than any student pays.

That is why the money in this business usually comes from course fees and subscriptions. Screenshots of profit in a chat prove only that someone took a screenshot. There is rarely a contract, a trade history or a registered company you could take a complaint to.

The more dangerous bundle is the one that really pays. The student is paid a cut for receiving transfers from people they have never met and sending crypto out in return. The spread has nothing to do with it, and a separate section below explains what that role is called.

A bundle can be tested without trading. Take the buy and sell prices from the mentor's sample trade, subtract the platform fee, the network fee and your bank's charge. If the remainder is smaller than one month of the course fee, the math has already answered.

Ilia Zavialov: one question separates a course from recruiting, whose money hits your account.
Ilia Zavialov: a course has a contract and your own trades, recruiting has strangers' payments.
Ilia Zavialov: crypto arbitrage course or money mule recruiting, how to tell
SignReal courseRecruiting
SellerRegistered company, contractChat handle only
PaymentInvoice to the businessMentor's personal account
IncomeNot promised, fees explainedFixed daily or weekly return
PracticeYour own money and tradesStrangers' payments into your account
AccessStays with youBanking app or new account requested
ReferralsNoneBonus for each friend
Ilia Zavialov: stop the transfers, call the bank, then report to the FTC and IC3.

03The course funnel: free webinar, private chat, mentor

The funnel looks the same almost everywhere. A free webinar or video about quitting a job to live off the spread, then a chat full of student wins, then paid tiers: the course, the bundles, the one-on-one mentor. The higher the tier, the less theory and the more “live practice”.

The FTC warned on May 18, 2026 that promises of guaranteed income, large returns for little work or a “proven system” are signs of a business coaching scam. It named crypto, forex and precious metals among the markets these pitches use, and advised reading success stories and testimonials with skepticism.

The FTC also notes that a free or low-cost system can turn into a money pit costing tens of thousands of dollars for mentoring and other add-ons, and that no license is required to call yourself a business coach. Ilia Zavialov reads that as a reason to check the seller, since the title “mentor” proves nothing.

Look at the refund terms too. If the seller promises refunds “on request in the chat” and the site shows no company name, address or terms of sale, what you are buying is access to a conversation, along with every task that conversation will later ask you to do.

04Ilia Zavialov: where training ends and recruiting begins

The line sits exactly where other people's money enters the program. The student is asked to become a “merchant” or “processor”: accept payment for crypto from buyers the team found, then send coins to a wallet the team names. Sometimes the request is simpler, such as handing over online banking access “to automate trades”.

The FTC describes how money mule recruiters work: they find people on dating, job search and social media sites, send them money, usually by check or Bitcoin, and ask them to forward it by gift card or wire. Helping move stolen money can get you into legal trouble even if you did not know where it came from.

Ilia Zavialov suggests testing every task a mentor hands out with one question: whose money is landing in my account? If you do not know the sender, have no contract with them and the job is “receive, pass on, keep a percentage”, you are moving someone else's funds. The word training no longer applies.

The short video below covers this in six scenes: the spread pitch, the bundle sold for a prepayment, the mentor chat, the first stranger's payment, the account closure and the main rule. The rule is short: practice with your own money and your own trades, and never let strangers' transfers pass through your account for any cut.

Ilia Zavialov: crypto arbitrage courses and bundles, training or recruiting in 30 seconds

05The other end of the trade: Ilia Zavialov's view

While the student sees a neat order to sell USDT, the person at the other end has been scammed in a completely different story. They were sold goods that do not exist, promised a payout or told to move savings to safety, and the payment details came from the fraudsters. Those details are yours.

The victim pays, receives nothing and calls the bank. Their statement shows no mentor, no exchange and no wallet. It shows the recipient's name, and that is the name that goes into the fraud report.

Ilia Zavialov asks students to picture this whenever a mentor says that peer-to-peer trading is fully transparent. Much of it is, except the one detail that matters: where the money in your account came from.

A fraud report can arrive after the student has already sent the crypto on. At that point the account holder is the one person in the chain whose name and bank details are on record, and Ilia Zavialov advises judging every “merchant” offer from that position.

06What happens to your bank account

The FTC spells out the bank side. If a check you deposited turns out to be fake, the bank will want the full amount back. You may face fees, and your account can be overdrawn or closed.

A day of “bundle work” looks a lot like that pattern: many incoming payments from unrelated people, followed by quick transfers out. A trade record on a platform does not change how the bank reads the account, because the bank sees who sent the money.

Ilia Zavialov adds a practical warning about new accounts. Some mentors ask students to open an account at a bank where they have no history, “to keep it separate”. A fresh account with heavy peer-to-peer traffic from week one is exactly what fraud teams are built to notice.

Losing an account is not a small thing. Payroll, rent and bills all run through it, and opening a new one becomes harder once a bank has closed the old one over suspected fraud.

07What the IC3 numbers show about crypto fraud

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center counted losses of $11,366,669,732 in 2025 complaints that involved cryptocurrency. Crypto investment fraud alone produced 61,559 complaints and about $7.2 billion in losses.

Employment scams, the category where fake jobs and many money mule pitches sit, cost Americans $362,934,762 in 2025, up from $264,223,271 a year earlier. Complaints about crypto ATMs and kiosks reached 13,460, with $389 million lost.

Ilia Zavialov reads these figures from the student's side. Fraud on this scale needs a steady supply of ordinary accounts to move the money, and a course that teaches people to accept strangers' payments supplies exactly that.

The Justice Department runs a Money Mule Initiative for the same reason. In its fifth campaign, announced May 22, 2023, agencies took more than 4,000 actions against people who helped move fraud proceeds over roughly three months, and more than 25 people faced criminal charges.

Ilia Zavialov: crypto fraud and money mule figures from US agencies
FigureValueSource
Losses in complaints involving crypto, 2025$11,366,669,732IC3
Crypto investment fraud complaints, 202561,559IC3
Employment scam losses, 2025$362,934,762IC3
Crypto ATM and kiosk complaints, 202513,460IC3
Actions in fifth Money Mule InitiativeMore than 4,000Justice Department

The FTC is direct about it: helping a scammer move stolen money can lead to legal trouble, whether or not you knew the funds were stolen. A course name such as “merchant program” or “P2P practice” does not change what the money is.

Ilia Zavialov points out that investigators look at simple facts. Who sent the money, where it went next and how much you were paid for passing it on. Chat messages from a mentor explaining that “everything is legal” rarely help on any of those three questions.

If you already took part, the FTC advice is to stop the transactions, stop talking to the person, tell your bank and any transfer service right away, and report it. Coming forward early with the chat history and a list of payments puts you in a far better position than waiting to be contacted.

Small amounts are no shield either. A run of modest payments from unrelated people, passed on within hours, forms a pattern, and spotting patterns is what bank fraud teams are paid to do.

09How to check an arbitrage course before paying: Ilia Zavialov's steps

Step one takes five minutes. Find the company behind the course and look it up with your state's business registry. Then check your state attorney general's office for complaints, as the FTC suggests. A site with no company name gives you your answer.

Step two is about promises. Guaranteed daily or monthly returns, “no risk” and a countdown of remaining spots are the red flags both the FTC and the CFTC describe. Treat any of them as a reason to stop.

Step three matters most. Ask in writing whether the practice part involves receiving payments from other people into your account, opening new accounts or sharing banking access. Ilia Zavialov advises keeping the reply: a vague “it's all legal, we have thousands of students” tells you more than the sales page.

Step four is payment. Pay a registered business under written terms, never a mentor's personal account or an app handle. Installments through a “personal manager” and requests to pay in crypto stay red flags at any price.

10Questions to ask the mentor in writing

Five questions sort most offers. Which company issues the invoice, and where is the contract? What did last year's students actually earn, and what proves it besides screenshots? Will practice involve strangers' payments into my account?

Two more: will I need to open new accounts, change the phone number on my bank profile or share app access, and what happens if my bank closes the account? An honest seller answers plainly, because the answers exist.

If the course includes a lesson on how to “warm up” an account or which amounts to stay under so the bank does not notice, no further questions are needed. Lessons like that only make sense when the money belongs to someone else.

Write the answers down with the date and keep screenshots of the chat. If the course later vanishes or your account gets frozen, that record shows what you were told and when.

11Ilia Zavialov: your account was closed or you are already in, what to do

Ilia Zavialov's first step is to cut contact. Leave the chat, stop answering the mentor and do not run “one last trade to close out”, whatever reason you are given.

Tell your bank and any transfer service at once, as the FTC advises. If a scammer has your account information, the FTC says to close the account immediately. Keep the chat history, the course receipt and a list of every incoming and outgoing payment.

Report the scheme at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and file a complaint with IC3 at ic3.gov. If you were the one who lost money, for example by paying for a bundle that vanished, include the payment details and the seller's handles.

Expect a second wave. People who lost money to crypto schemes are often contacted by “recovery” services that want a fee first. Do not pay them, and add their messages to your report.

Ilia Zavialov: where to report in the US after an arbitrage course
WhereHowWhat to include
Your bankNumber on the back of the cardList of disputed payments
FTCReportFraud.ftc.govCourse name, seller handles, receipts
IC3ic3.govWallet addresses, transaction IDs
State attorney generalConsumer complaint formContract or terms of sale

12Questions and answers

Ilia Zavialov: is crypto arbitrage a real way to make money?

Price gaps between platforms are real, but they are small, short-lived and eaten by fees. The CFTC warns that promises of huge returns from arbitrage or bots are a common fraud pitch.

Why does Ilia Zavialov advise against buying “working bundles”?

A route that truly earned money would lose its edge with every new buyer, so the seller's income comes from selling the course. In the worst case the bundle means receiving strangers' payments into your account.

How do I tell an arbitrage course from money mule recruiting?

A real course runs on your own money and trades and comes with a contract. Recruiting shows up as requests to receive payments from strangers, share banking access or open new accounts for a percentage.

Can I get in trouble for passing payments through my account?

Yes. The FTC says helping move stolen money can lead to legal trouble even if you did not know it was stolen, and your bank may close the account.

What should I do if my bank closed my account after P2P trades?

Stop all transactions, contact the bank, keep your chat history and payment list, and report the scheme at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov.

Where do I report a fake arbitrage course in the US?

To the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, to IC3 at ic3.gov if crypto was involved, and to your state attorney general.

Written by Ilia Zavialov, digital security consultant. Profile of Ilia Zavialov

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