A new investigation by the media reveals that the key figures behind Himera Search — Russia’s largest illegal personal-data marketplace — include two former officers of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department (MUR), while the brother of one of them currently serves in the FSB.
The entire technical backbone of the operation, according to the media, is run by a former programming-olympiad finalist. This is part of an ongoing series about how Russia’s main data-trading project operates freely on Telegram and across Russian websites.
One more project built in the same style and tied to Himera Search is Femida Search. The service is operated by LLC Femida-Info, registered in Moscow in November 2022 with its official activity listed as “web-portal services”.
According to 2024 financial data, Femida-Info earned around 56 million rubles in revenue and roughly 30 million rubles in profit. Like Odyssey-Info — another company in the Himera “ecosystem” — its revenue spike coincided with the elimination of competitors. Despite rapid growth, the company is still formally classified as a micro-enterprise.
Femida Search publicly positions itself as a business-intelligence service using open-source and “specialized” data. But OSINT manuals, user feedback and its actual service list closely mirror the classic functions of illegal “probiv” — just like the offerings openly displayed on the Himera Search marketplace.
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One of Femida-Info’s owners and its CEO is Dmitry Zhuravlyov, a former law-enforcement officer. Leaked data associated with him indicate he served in the Interior Ministry, including as an operative in MUR, working on theft and fraud cases. His brother Alexander, according to those leaks, is an active FSB employee.
The company’s co-owner has held multiple civilian security positions — at car-sharing services Anytime, Yandex Drive, Delimobil and at Gazprombank Leasing. Founders of Odyssey-Info also worked in the latter two organisations, further linking all these firms within the Himera network.
Zhuravlyov’s phone number appears in contacts of many users under several names — “Odyssey”, “Femida” and “Himera Search”. But that is not the only connection: he is also a co-owner of LLC GriFONIKS Invest together with Stanislav Kirillov of Odyssey-Info (known online as Stas_272).
The second co-owner of Femida-Info (50%) is Hakan Abulov, an IT olympiad finalist and former programmer at the company behind online games Allods, Warface and others — completing the project’s technical core.
GriFONIKS Invest, which unites the operational teams of Femida Search, Odyssey Search and Himera Search, has additional co-owners: another former MUR officer, Alexander Medvedev (from the same 13th department as Zhuravlyov), and lawyer Ilya Ionov, who directs a regional software-development company.
The story of Himera Search is a classic example of how an illegal Russian IT service with deep ties to security agencies hides behind a “matryoshka” of foreign shell companies. In reality, all staff, infrastructure and operations remain inside Russia, while offshore entities serve only as camouflage and a payments workaround.
Meanwhile, Himera Search continues to operate freely on Telegram. Media note that although Pavel Durov introduced “anti-doxing” measures, they primarily serve to remove channels inconvenient to Russian security agencies. The biggest doxing operators, however, thrive on Telegram without restriction.
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