Kazakhstan's Financial Monitoring Agency has placed an Uzbek citizen, Mahmud Khikmatov, known under the pseudonym Makha.dxb, on the international wanted list, reports infohub.kz.
According to the agency's press service, the blogger Makha.dxb, born in 2000, is wanted. He is suspected of promoting an illegal online casino. A court has ordered his detention. In Kazakhstan, a scheme was operating to provide an illegal online casino interface, accept and pay out funds (via acquiring, mobile commerce, cryptocurrency), and advertise to attract more players from among the country's citizens.
The AFM stated that the organizers enlisted blogger Khikmatov to attract influencers operating in Kazakhstan to post promotional content. In this role, Khikmatov requested from bloggers their social media statistics, including demographics, subscriber geography, and audience reach, to determine advertising costs. He attracted over 35 bloggers, including blogger Qamza Q.
With a large audience, Qamza Q. deliberately involved Kazakh citizens in prohibited gambling activities by posting referral links to online casinos and receiving rewards for each user click.
On August 6, Qamza Q. was extradited from Vietnam. If you have any information about the whereabouts of the wanted person, please contact the Financial Monitoring Agency at +7 7172 70 84 78 (duty office). A reward and anonymity are guaranteed.
Earlier, a notice for blogger Qaisar Kamza was published on the portal of legal statistics and special records. The initiator is the Financial Monitoring Agency, and the search is conducted by the Department of Economic Investigations for Astana. Later, Qaisar Kamza commented on the information that the AFM had put him on the wanted list. Soon, the AFM stated that the blogger is suspected of complicity in illegal gambling activities.
For five years, the suspect ran an active blog on Instagram under the name "qais_arr" (2.4 million followers) and administered a closed Telegram channel "Qora Entertainment" (368 thousand subscribers). On April 13, it became known that he was detained in Vietnam. In May, he contacted his followers for the first time in a long while and spoke about his detention. On August 6, the Prosecutor General's Office reported his extradition from Vietnam.