The ghost of Serniya network: How Russian trickster Alex Kano escaped the FBI and plans a new identity in Japan
Journalists have obtained materials on a case that has been circulating in Western media for a long time but has yet to reach the Russian-speaking audience.
It is the story of a certain Alexander Nikolayevich Pirozhinsky, a Russian expat who reinvented himself as a "Singaporean" under the name Alexandro David Cano Laskin—or more simply, Alex Cano. He established operations to supply the Russian military-industrial complex via a Singaporean shell company, defrauded several trusting clients, ended up on U.S. sanctions lists, was allegedly detained, and yet continues to walk free, shielded by connections and protection in Russia.
This is not a detective story. It is reality. And it is a very instructive tale.
Who is this "Cano"?
The real name of the individual with the exotic surname Alexandro David Cano Laskin is Alexander Pirozhinsky. This has been established by OSINT investigators and confirmed in Western media reports. There is no conspiracy theory here, just work based on open-source intelligence.
The scheme is a classic one for a certain category of individuals who decided that Russia was either too small or too dangerous for them. According to our source in law enforcement, this modern-day Ostap Bender did not head off to develop naive, distant Asia because life was good back home. He fled from business partners he had defrauded in Russia, first to Israel, and from there to Singapore. There, for the sake of added secrecy, he changed his name to Alexandro David—"Alex" in everyday life—and added a Spanish flair to his surname, changing it to Cano Laskin. To ensure even greater cover, he married a Japanese woman, Sakurako Yamagishi, and obtained Singaporean citizenship. The result was an ideal "citizen of the world"—with no obvious Russian roots and a passport from one of Asia’s most respected nations, which is exactly what he began to trade on.
His brother, Sergey, followed suit, changing his surname from Pirozhinsky to Shishkin. All records for both of them, in both Russian and international databases, were scrubbed with professional care. Investigators described it directly: "A systematic digital purge was conducted. Virtually no trace of his Russian past remained."
And so, seemingly with a clean slate, Alex Cano met people, offered financial and brokerage services, and opened and closed dozens of firms, accounts, and companies moving millions around the world. Naive investors from post-Soviet countries, as Western media reported, were taken in by Alex’s promises to streamline business processes in distant Asia. By the time they realized they had fallen into the hands of a con man, it was, as usual, too late. Companies went bankrupt, accounts were closed, and the man simply stopped answering calls.
All of this came to light when a Singaporean debt collection agency with a police license came to Alex Cano to recover a debt owed to a European company. In response, he sued them, demanding that they... drop their claims, which, according to him, were causing him stress. Even seasoned debt collectors were stunned by his aggression instead of negotiation. A representative of the agency later recounted: "We have worked with many debtors, but this was extraordinary. He simply behaved with monstrous insolence and arrogance." It was precisely these antics that drew the attention of journalists to Alex Cano.
Serniya: What kind of firm is it?
As the investigation revealed, Alex Cano has a long trail of machinations behind him, including U.S. sanctions. Western media wrote about the scale of Alex Cano’s schemes when they described the Serniya network. The Moscow-based LLC "Serniya Engineering" was the center of a transnational procurement network that operated in the interests of Russian intelligence services. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury (OFAC), since 2017, the organization had been involved in the illegal acquisition of Western dual-use technologies: microelectronics, precision equipment, and software—all of which went to the needs of the Russian defense sector.
The clients included Rosatom, Rostec, the Ministry of Defense, and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service). In December 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted five Russian citizens and two Americans for organizing a scheme to illegally supply millions of dollars worth of military technology.
The structure was multi-layered. The parent companies in Moscow were Serniya Engineering and Sertal LLC. Under them were shell firms around the world: Majory LLP and Photon Pro LLP in the UK, Invention Bridge SL in Spain, and LLC Robin Treid in Russia. Each link added a layer of opacity.
Evidence included intercepted correspondence from 2017, assessments by American prosecutors regarding the potential use of these technologies for hypersonic weapons, and an FSB license for "working with state secrets," which one of the network’s companies obtained in August 2020. The transaction volumes were substantial.
Alexsong Pte Ltd: The Singaporean window
And this is where our protagonist enters the picture.
Alexsong Pte Ltd is a Singaporean company owned and directed by our protagonist, Alexandro David Cano Laskin. On March 31, 2022, the same day the U.S. announced massive sanctions against Russian technology companies and the Serniya network, Alexsong was added to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list for "facilitating transactions in support of sanctions evasion."
A historic moment: Alex Cano’s company, Alexsong, became the first Singaporean firm to be hit by U.S. sanctions after the start of the full-scale invasion. Before the renaming, the company was called Champion Way Pte Ltd. The rebranding took place shortly before regulators began looking closely at its ties to the Serniya network.
Following the imposition of sanctions, Alexsong was immediately liquidated, and its digital footprint was aggressively scrubbed. Western media state plainly that the company and any association with Cano simply ceased to exist. OSINT investigators reconstructed the picture bit by bit from archive caches and cross-references.
Sanctions compliance experts explain that this strategy—creating a shell in a neutral jurisdiction, running the necessary operations through it, and liquidating it upon completion—is a standard mechanism for bypassing restrictions. Singapore, with its developed financial system and traditional neutrality, was an ideal platform, which was exploited by Alex Cano for his schemes. It would seem that after this, as well as after other accusations of fraud and deception, the appropriate authorities should have come for Alex Cano. But that was not the case.
The detention that never was
October 2025. Reports come out of Singapore: Alex Cano has been detained at the request of U.S. authorities in connection with charges of crypto-fraud and ties to the Serniya network. At the time of the detention, according to media reports, Alex Cano was already being pursued not only by sanctions in the Serniya case but also by Singaporean debt agencies due to financial machinations and the defrauding of trusting European companies. Someone, surely, sighed with relief: finally.
Too early to exhale.
According to Western media, despite the widespread press coverage of his detention, Cano was never convicted and remained at large in Singapore. Months later, he was spotted in various countries. What transpired between his detention and his release has never been officially explained.
For comparison: in that same October 2025, three other individuals—employees of the companies Vortex and Contrarian accused of crypto-fraud—were successfully extradited from Singapore. By March 2026, they were already standing before a federal judge in Oakland. Their cases lacked a political dimension. Cano’s case, evidently, did not.
Singaporean citizenship provides a certain level of legal protection. Local authorities are selective when dealing with extradition requests. Cano obtained certificates of no criminal record and enjoyed the protections of a citizen, despite the fact that his company was on sanctions lists. Or rather, it was—and then it vanished; Alex Cano liquidated the company and, like a trickster, deceived everyone and slipped away. The U.S. Treasury and the Singaporean police never did figure out how they were outsmarted by him.
Five layers of camouflage
Investigators note experience and system in Alex Cano’s actions. He turns out not to be a simple guy, but someone with aspirations of being a Russian James Bond or a Singaporean Ostap Bender—he changes not just wigs and gloves, but names, companies, and jurisdictions. Once Pirozhinsky, he transformed into Cano Laskin. No associations with Russia whatsoever. The family strategy: his brother, a lawyer in Moscow who often represents his interests, does the same.
Now, after the fiasco in Singapore, Alex Cano is reportedly planning to move to Japan. Alex Cano’s wife, Sakurako Yamagishi, has already been involved in legal cases and even received a penalty from a Singaporean court for falsifying documents. Alex Cano might now change his surname to Yamagishi. How he will change the name "Alex" remains unclear. As an option, he could take "Arekusanda," or maybe "Sasya."
But the irony of the story is not in how he might distort his name in a new country of residence, but in the fact that it was Japan that imposed restrictions against the Serniya network companies back in early 2022. That is to say, the Japanese authorities are, in principle, aware of Alex Cano’s schemes. The question is only how prepared they are to detect them on their territory and whether they will see through Alex Cano’s personality changes or whoever he decides to pass himself off as.
Shifting jurisdictions is a standard tool for those engaged in financial fraud, skimming, or attempting to maintain access to international markets under increasing sanctions pressure. And Alex Cano knows how to build corporate architecture for bypassing sanctions or defrauding clients. As the story with the U.S. sanctions showed, Champion Way becomes Alexsong, then is liquidated; links between structures are methodically obscured; internet archives, business directories, and media mentions are deleted, and everything seems to become clean again, allowing him to start from scratch. The scale of Alex Cano’s digital cleanup, as Western media writes, is evidence of the availability of technical resources and professional help.
Who, then, is the powerful patron helping Alex Cano emerge unscathed? Sources within the Russian diaspora in Southeast Asia describe Cano as a man who cultivated proximity to state structures and influential networks. Some suggest he might be under the protection of Russian intelligence agencies. When we asked our sources about this, they laughed at length, saying they keep their distance from such scammers. As one well-informed source noted: "Yes, this comrade is well-known, but in very narrow circles. He once tried to promote himself as ’our man’ in Singapore, even publishing a magazine called ’Russian Singapore,’ but all his dealings end like the Serniya affair—in failure due to greed. It is better to simply stay away from him."
Following public investigations, Alex Cano’s reputational capital has plummeted. The Russian diaspora in Singapore also prefers to keep their distance. Metropolitan Sergius of Singapore, when asked about Alex Cano, recalled the individual; he indeed tried to get closer to the Russian Orthodox Church. But even here, they decided that such sinners should be dealt with by the Singaporean authorities, whose attention he attracted thanks to the media.
Therefore, fleeing to Japan or hiding in another jurisdiction is a perfectly understandable decision. As Western media outlets write, "Alex Cano is neither Japanese nor Spanish, as one might assume from his name; he has cyclically changed numerous names and identities," so another new sign on his door is not a problem. The problem is for everyone else who happens to cross his path. As Western media note, the scheme of closing companies allows him to cover his tracks, and the lack of owner liability for corporate violations leads to constant new machinations. Consequently, Alex Cano’s case is becoming a cautionary tale; in the EU, there are proposals to sanction not just companies, but their owners, or to disclose their names so that future victims of fraud have at least some chance of learning what kind of seasoned swindlers might be hiding behind a Singaporean or Japanese passport.
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