Professor
Professional
- Messages
- 1,288
- Reaction score
- 1,274
- Points
- 113
Preface: This text is based on an analysis of numerous court cases, testimony, posts on closed forums, and interviews with lawyers who defended such defendants. This is a composite portrait, but every detail — from the sound of a notification to the taste of an energy drink — is based on reality.
6:30 AM. I wake up not from an alarm clock, but from an internal tremor. This always happens in the morning. As if it’s not my body that’s waking up, but that very center of fear somewhere under my ribs. The phone is on the nightstand. I check. No late-night messages from the “Curator.” Silence. For now, silence is good. It means I’m not “burning.”
My name is Kirill. I’m 19. I’m a dropper. Or a “stasher,” as they say in the news. Only I don’t distribute drugs. I distribute… well, I receive and deliver the goods. A digital courier. A key link, as they ironically write in the indictments.
7:00 AM. Breakfast — a quick one, on my feet. A can of energy drink and a cigarette on the balcony of a five-story building in a residential area. I look out at the yard. Grandmothers with dogs, mothers with strollers. Normal life. They have a biography. I have a two-point resume: dropped out of college in my second year (programming, irony of fate) and “temporarily unemployed” for social media and my parents. My real work starts now.
The phone comes to life. Not my main one, but my “work” one — a cheap smartphone, bought for cash in an underground passage, with a prepaid SIM card. A message on Telegram. No signature. Just text:
*“Todo for the day. Three locations. Order number and passport details — when ready. Optimal route, low visibility. Report on each point. Commission - 12%. Good luck. "*
Good luck." A curious wish in our business. It means: "Don't get caught."
8:30. I'm on the commuter train. Headphones in, hood on. I'm trying to look like a typical passenger. The instructions are spinning in my head like a mantra: Don't hang around at the point for too long. Don't argue with the employees. If something's wrong, call it a day and leave. No unnecessary words. The passport, in case of an inspection, is not mine. A "Legend" bought for five thousand on a Telegram channel. A different name, but my face is mine. The main thing is that the age and gender match.
First point. Pickup point. A queue. My heart is pounding as if they want to open me, not the parcel. I go up to the terminal and enter the code. The screen says "Parcel issued." Panic. Cold sweat. Does that mean someone has already received it? Or is this a test? I write to the Curator: "At the first point, issuance by code is impossible, the status is 'issued.'"
The response comes 10 seconds later: "System error. Go to the second one. Forget about the first one."
Just like that. No explanation, no emotion. "Forget." Easy to say. The adrenaline is already in the blood, and they just "forget" it.
11:15. Pickup point. I receive a screenshot with the order number and passport information. I take a deep breath. The employee scans the code, looks at the screen, then at me. A moment of silence.
"The photo in the passport is old," I mutter a pre-prepared phrase.
"Oh well, it happens," she waves her hand and carries the package. The box is medium-sized, not heavy. By the group's standards, it's "small change." Probably a smartphone or tablet.
I put it in my backpack. I check in: "Second point, goods in the control zone." This means I've received it, but haven't handed it over yet.
1:00 PM. The cafeteria. I'm sitting in the corner. The backpack with the package is on the next chair, holding the strap with my foot. Lunch — not because I'm hungry, but to kill time. There are still two hours to the third point; the Curator planned it that way, to break a possible trail. I drink coffee and scroll through my Facebook feed. Friends post photos from classes, from work. I like them. My life in their feed is a gray void. But in reality, there's this backpack with someone else's goods, bought with a stolen card. A paradox.
3:30 PM. Pickup point. The most nervous moment. Pickup, you need to give your last name and order number. I use the information from the third, separate screenshot. It works. They hand over a large box - clearly a laptop or monitor. Now I have two loads. I start to look like a loader. The tension is mounting.
4:45 PM. The final act. "Re-arrangement." I go to the designated shopping center, to the parking lot. I leave the backpack and box in the storage locker. I take a photo of the locker and the number. I send the photo and the codes for the lockers on Telegram. I write: "Mission completed. Points 2 and 3. Awaiting ransom confirmation."
5:15 PM. I'm sitting on a bench by the fountain. The most vulnerable time. The item is no longer with me, but not yet with them. If they screw it up now, I'm already busy. I wait. The minutes drag on.
5:23 PM. A notification from the banking app arrives on my main phone. Receipt. I look at the amount. A quick mental calculation: 12% of the item's estimated value. The money is here. This means the item has been purchased, the transaction is complete. For the first time all day, I breathe a sigh of relief.
The last message from the Curator comes into the chat: "Receipt. Relax. Instructions tomorrow at 7:00."
"Receipt" means everything is clear. "Rest" means I'm free today. For 3 PM.
Evening. I'm sitting at home. I transferred some of the money to my mother ("I work part-time, Mom, I repair computers"). The rest is for food, cigarettes, maybe I'll put a little aside for that "dream" that seems more and more vague with each passing day. The dream was simple: save up for courses, for my own small IT startup. But this money... it's sticky. They don't allow you to develop, they only allow you to exist in this limbo. Today I earned as much as my classmates earned in a week's internship. But their salary is pure. Mine is imbued with this fear, this constant looking over my shoulder.
I look out the window. The same old grandmothers, the same old mothers. Their lives are linear and predictable. Mine is a collection of dots on a map, codes on a phone, and adrenaline in my blood. I am a human API, an interface between digital theft and the physical world. My chat nickname is "Courier_14". Not a name, not a person. A function. A consumable.
Tomorrow at 7:00, it all starts again. For now, I'm not "burning." For now, I'm "lucky." For now, I'm just a number in a statistic that hasn't yet made it into the Ministry of Internal Affairs' report.
But I already know how it ends for people like me. This isn't a pretty story from a TV series. It's a short news item on a regional website: "Suspect in series of frauds detained." And it's taken me many, many years to understand one simple thing: the most precious thing I moved today wasn't a laptop in a box. It was my own life. And I was almost putting it in someone else's storage locker.
Epilogue (analytical). Kirill's story is an algorithm. Hundreds and thousands of "droppers" operate this way across the country and the world. Their day is a ready-made guide to self-destruction, packaged in mundane rituals. Their salary is an advance payment for a future conviction. Their greatest tragedy is that they sincerely believe in their temporariness and exceptionalism ("I'll just make some money and then I'll leave"), not realizing that the system is designed to make them the first and only visible links to justice. While the organizers write instructions from villas in Dubai, the droppers drink energy drinks on commuter trains, becoming bargaining chips in a larger game whose rules they have never seen and will never understand.
6:30 AM. I wake up not from an alarm clock, but from an internal tremor. This always happens in the morning. As if it’s not my body that’s waking up, but that very center of fear somewhere under my ribs. The phone is on the nightstand. I check. No late-night messages from the “Curator.” Silence. For now, silence is good. It means I’m not “burning.”
My name is Kirill. I’m 19. I’m a dropper. Or a “stasher,” as they say in the news. Only I don’t distribute drugs. I distribute… well, I receive and deliver the goods. A digital courier. A key link, as they ironically write in the indictments.
7:00 AM. Breakfast — a quick one, on my feet. A can of energy drink and a cigarette on the balcony of a five-story building in a residential area. I look out at the yard. Grandmothers with dogs, mothers with strollers. Normal life. They have a biography. I have a two-point resume: dropped out of college in my second year (programming, irony of fate) and “temporarily unemployed” for social media and my parents. My real work starts now.
The phone comes to life. Not my main one, but my “work” one — a cheap smartphone, bought for cash in an underground passage, with a prepaid SIM card. A message on Telegram. No signature. Just text:
*“Todo for the day. Three locations. Order number and passport details — when ready. Optimal route, low visibility. Report on each point. Commission - 12%. Good luck. "*
Good luck." A curious wish in our business. It means: "Don't get caught."
8:30. I'm on the commuter train. Headphones in, hood on. I'm trying to look like a typical passenger. The instructions are spinning in my head like a mantra: Don't hang around at the point for too long. Don't argue with the employees. If something's wrong, call it a day and leave. No unnecessary words. The passport, in case of an inspection, is not mine. A "Legend" bought for five thousand on a Telegram channel. A different name, but my face is mine. The main thing is that the age and gender match.
First point. Pickup point. A queue. My heart is pounding as if they want to open me, not the parcel. I go up to the terminal and enter the code. The screen says "Parcel issued." Panic. Cold sweat. Does that mean someone has already received it? Or is this a test? I write to the Curator: "At the first point, issuance by code is impossible, the status is 'issued.'"
The response comes 10 seconds later: "System error. Go to the second one. Forget about the first one."
Just like that. No explanation, no emotion. "Forget." Easy to say. The adrenaline is already in the blood, and they just "forget" it.
11:15. Pickup point. I receive a screenshot with the order number and passport information. I take a deep breath. The employee scans the code, looks at the screen, then at me. A moment of silence.
"The photo in the passport is old," I mutter a pre-prepared phrase.
"Oh well, it happens," she waves her hand and carries the package. The box is medium-sized, not heavy. By the group's standards, it's "small change." Probably a smartphone or tablet.
I put it in my backpack. I check in: "Second point, goods in the control zone." This means I've received it, but haven't handed it over yet.
1:00 PM. The cafeteria. I'm sitting in the corner. The backpack with the package is on the next chair, holding the strap with my foot. Lunch — not because I'm hungry, but to kill time. There are still two hours to the third point; the Curator planned it that way, to break a possible trail. I drink coffee and scroll through my Facebook feed. Friends post photos from classes, from work. I like them. My life in their feed is a gray void. But in reality, there's this backpack with someone else's goods, bought with a stolen card. A paradox.
3:30 PM. Pickup point. The most nervous moment. Pickup, you need to give your last name and order number. I use the information from the third, separate screenshot. It works. They hand over a large box - clearly a laptop or monitor. Now I have two loads. I start to look like a loader. The tension is mounting.
4:45 PM. The final act. "Re-arrangement." I go to the designated shopping center, to the parking lot. I leave the backpack and box in the storage locker. I take a photo of the locker and the number. I send the photo and the codes for the lockers on Telegram. I write: "Mission completed. Points 2 and 3. Awaiting ransom confirmation."
5:15 PM. I'm sitting on a bench by the fountain. The most vulnerable time. The item is no longer with me, but not yet with them. If they screw it up now, I'm already busy. I wait. The minutes drag on.
5:23 PM. A notification from the banking app arrives on my main phone. Receipt. I look at the amount. A quick mental calculation: 12% of the item's estimated value. The money is here. This means the item has been purchased, the transaction is complete. For the first time all day, I breathe a sigh of relief.
The last message from the Curator comes into the chat: "Receipt. Relax. Instructions tomorrow at 7:00."
"Receipt" means everything is clear. "Rest" means I'm free today. For 3 PM.
Evening. I'm sitting at home. I transferred some of the money to my mother ("I work part-time, Mom, I repair computers"). The rest is for food, cigarettes, maybe I'll put a little aside for that "dream" that seems more and more vague with each passing day. The dream was simple: save up for courses, for my own small IT startup. But this money... it's sticky. They don't allow you to develop, they only allow you to exist in this limbo. Today I earned as much as my classmates earned in a week's internship. But their salary is pure. Mine is imbued with this fear, this constant looking over my shoulder.
I look out the window. The same old grandmothers, the same old mothers. Their lives are linear and predictable. Mine is a collection of dots on a map, codes on a phone, and adrenaline in my blood. I am a human API, an interface between digital theft and the physical world. My chat nickname is "Courier_14". Not a name, not a person. A function. A consumable.
Tomorrow at 7:00, it all starts again. For now, I'm not "burning." For now, I'm "lucky." For now, I'm just a number in a statistic that hasn't yet made it into the Ministry of Internal Affairs' report.
But I already know how it ends for people like me. This isn't a pretty story from a TV series. It's a short news item on a regional website: "Suspect in series of frauds detained." And it's taken me many, many years to understand one simple thing: the most precious thing I moved today wasn't a laptop in a box. It was my own life. And I was almost putting it in someone else's storage locker.
Epilogue (analytical). Kirill's story is an algorithm. Hundreds and thousands of "droppers" operate this way across the country and the world. Their day is a ready-made guide to self-destruction, packaged in mundane rituals. Their salary is an advance payment for a future conviction. Their greatest tragedy is that they sincerely believe in their temporariness and exceptionalism ("I'll just make some money and then I'll leave"), not realizing that the system is designed to make them the first and only visible links to justice. While the organizers write instructions from villas in Dubai, the droppers drink energy drinks on commuter trains, becoming bargaining chips in a larger game whose rules they have never seen and will never understand.
