Volzhsky District Court of the Samara region announced the verdict to members of the criminal community of Samaritan Roman Tverdokhleb, who was engaged in the mass sale of counterfeit five-thousandth notes.
The defendants received from 14 to 20 years in a high-security penal colony. Fakes were sold through a store on the banned Hydra darknet platform; the scale of trade is also impressive: criminals managed to cover territories from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.
The large-scale case of the criminal community of counterfeiters, the leader of which was recognized by law enforcement officers as Samaritan Roman Tverdokhleb, began with a whole scattering of small criminal cases initiated in various regions of the Russian Federation in 2021-2022. Among the territories that surfaced during the investigation of the sale of counterfeit banknotes are Leninsky, Promyshlenniy, Krasnoglinsky districts of Samara, Volzhsky district of the Samara region, Tolyatti, Kaliningrad, Evpatoria, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Nizhnekamsk district of the Republic of Tatarstan, Nizhny Novgorod, Irkutsk, Tyumen, Vladivostok, Nytvensky district of Perm Krai. Later, this list was supplemented by St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region.
When it became clear that the same criminals "worked" in all cases of selling counterfeit five-thousand-dollar bills, all the non-regional episodes were combined into one large criminal case, which was under investigation by the investigative department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the Samara region.
According to the investigative body, in addition to its organizer Tverdokhleb, the criminal community included Vladimir Yudin, Igor Shcherbakov and Dmitry Gusarov. The period of their crimes is 2020-2022. The FAKE/MONEY online store of the optimized online platform hydraruzxpnew4af.onion, administered by Tverdokhleb, was used to sell fakes. This platform is one of the "mirrors" of the largest banned darknet platform in Russia, Hydra (for more information, see the text "Hydra was banned in Chapaevsk"). Tverdokhleb himself was present at the site under the nickname Hammer444, invented in honor of his favorite car "Hammer" with numbers 444.
On the FAKE / MONEY store page, it was possible to find (and operational employees subsequently did) correspondence with customers, data on the withdrawal of cryptocurrency, announcements about the recruitment of employees.
The business of OPS Tverdokhleb was built on tracing paper from drug shops, that is, the sale of counterfeit bills was carried out through caches- "bookmarks". The leader of the OPS bought the bills themselves in bulk on the same "Hydra" from unidentified persons in a store called "Elite". Forgeries were sent to remote regions of the Russian Federation by parcels of transport and logistics companies SDEK and Pony Express. Fictitious names were used for sending: Krygin Nikolay, Melnikov Dmitry, Klimov V. S., Kragin N. S., Melnikov O., Melnikov Dmitry, Prokhorov Dmitry. A significant part of the contractors of the OPS was also identified and condemned (one example of such "cooperation" is in the text "Cadets "threw" Chinese").
Earnings from the sale of counterfeit money were accumulated on an electronic wallet in the form of cryptocurrency, then with the help of exchange resources they were transferred to the bank cards of OPS participants.
Tverdokhleb told his accomplice Shcherbakov that he had several online stores selling fake bank notes. He handed over one store to management, the other worked for about six months and was closed.
OPS participant Vladimir Yudin is an old acquaintance of Roman Tverdokhleb, they lived next door in the village of Bereza. In 2020, Tverdokhleb called Yudin from St. Petersburg and offered him a job selling counterfeit money. Yudin was supposed to be engaged in packaging fakes, placing them in caches- "bookmarks" with further sending geotags to Tverdokhlebu. Accomplices ordered a wholesale batch of fakes in the amount of 100 pieces-it was taken from the forest "bookmarks" behind the Moscow Ring Road somewhere in the Moscow region. The bills were moved to a cache in a wooded area near St. Petersburg, from where they were taken away as needed and placed in small batches in other "bookmarks". For each new "bookmark" Yudin received 500-600 rubles on the card. In conversations, counterfeit bills were called "candy wrappers "and"pieces of paper". Later, Tverdokhleb returned to Samara and kept the fakes at home.
In Samara, the "pawnbroker" was Dmitry Gusarov, who took fakes from a cache in a Country Park, in a wooded area behind the Mega shopping mall, on the 9th clearing. Gusarov was paid less — 150 rubles for one "bookmark" made. Later, during interrogations, he tried to convince law enforcement officers that he was sure that the packages contained medical certificates, and not fake money.
In the summer of 2021, Igor Shcherbakov joined the criminal community, who offered Tverdokhleb to sell drugs on the promoted site. The organizer of the criminal community thought about it and agreed.
The first experience of selling a drug was successful. In a wooded area behind the village of Roshchinsky, a wholesale "bookmark" was found, where there were 100 grams of mephedrone, the drug was packaged and sold in small batches for 2,200 rubles per 1 gram. After some time, Tverdokhleb said that he wanted to sell the FAKE/MONEY store due to low profitability, and offered Shcherbakov to buy it for 450 thousand rubles. The deal took place, and the store began to sell only drugs, however, not for long. Already in November 2021, Shcherbakov was "taken" from a cache of mephedrone in the 67th quarter of the Samara forestry district.
It turned out that the police had been monitoring FAKE/MONEY for a long time. Employees of the UEBiPK of the regional State Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs installed the Tor browser, created a fake account Stuka163, from which several verification purchases of counterfeit banknotes were made from March to May 2021. Police officers had to search for stashes- "bookmarks" in the village of Dubovy Gai of the Volzhsky district, in the Krasnoglinsky district, in the forest park behind the Seredavin hospital and on the 7th clearing. After the arrest of Shcherbakov, the investigation went faster — he gave the security forces usernames and passwords from the store on "Hydra". Soon all members of the criminal community were identified and detained.
The criminal case against Roman Tverdokhleb was heard by the Volzhsky District Court of the Samara Region. Members of the criminal community were charged with Article 210 of the Criminal Code (creation and participation in a criminal community), part 3 of Article 186 of the Criminal Code (production, storage, transportation or sale of counterfeit money or securities committed by an organized group), and the leader of the community and Shcherbakov were also charged with illegal drug trafficking. Recently, a guilty verdict was announced in the case. According to the Prosecutor's Office of the Samara region, " the court agreed with the opinion of the state prosecutor and sentenced the organizer of the criminal community to 20 years in prison with a fine of 2 million rubles. Three other convicts were sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 14 to 16 years with fines from 900 thousand to 2 million rubles. They will serve their sentences in a high-security penal colony."
Cadets "threw" the Chinese
Among the victims of the actions of Roman Tverdokhleb's OPS are a whole group of Chinese traders from Vladivostok: Nguyen Van Ngoc, Cui Xiangqing, Truong Thi Xuan, Nguyen Thi Huong, Youong Thi Lieu, Nguyen Thi Chan. All of them worked at the Nekrasovsky market and the Second River fish market in Vladivostok.
Abusers of Chinese merchants are sailors-cadets Alexey Shvedchikov and Artem Kosterin, who ordered 10 fake five-thousandth notes for 18 thousand rubles in the FAKE/MONEY store on the darknet. To do this, Kosterin registered on "Hydra" under the nickname Shebal23457. Both defendants at that time lived in the hostel of the Admiral Nevelsky Maritime State University, where they were cadets.
As the accused reported during interrogations, a whole instruction on the" correct "sale of counterfeit banknotes was posted on Hydra . It was recommended to pay with fakes in markets where there is poor lighting and there are no machines for verifying the authenticity of banknotes. It is "necessary" to go and sell to at least two people, in different places and one bill each, and also to take measures to distract sellers. There was advice to keep a few small bills in your wallet and show the seller when purchasing goods that there is not enough money for the purchase and you will have to pay with a large five-thousandth bill.
Also in the case of Shvedchikov and Kosterin, there is a screenshot of the FAKE/MONEY store page. An ad was posted on the page: "This product can be purchased with delivery in Russia. We send them by Stealth (we hide bills in a toy / book, etc.). We ship exclusively in the 1st class. After sending it, you will receive a tracking track. WE WORK WITH THE GUARANTOR (what is the guarantor, is not explained. The minimum number of bills to send is 15 pieces. DELIVERY ACROSS THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IS ALREADY INCLUDED IN THE PRICE. Visit our forum" (original spelling is preserved).
The fakes were delivered to Vladivostok by courier. In February 2021, Shvedchikov and Kosterin made a trip to markets and supermarkets in order to sell fakes. They went to the" case " in cadet uniforms and medical masks. They bought all sorts of nonsense — ceramic mugs, men's underwear, home slippers, cheap sneakers, a floor mat, a knitted hat. Soon after, they were detained by police officers. The deceived Chinese told the same story: two guys came, paid for the products with a five-thousandth bill, then left. The police also seized fakes. Shvedchikov and Kosterin became defendants in a criminal case, and in the fall of 2023 they were sentenced to suspended sentences by the Pervorechenskiy District Court of Vladivostok. The defendants did not appeal the verdict.
"Hydra" banned in Chapaevsk
Until April 2022, Hydra, where the Samara counterfeiters ' store was located, was the most famous Russian drug platform and the world's largest resource in terms of illegal operations with cryptocurrency. Hydra was launched in 2015, and by mid-2019, 2.5 million accounts were registered on the resource. In 2020 alone, Hydra's revenue was $1.3 billion. The drug platform was associated with the name of Russian businessman Dmitry Pavlov.
In addition to drugs, the most popular products on Hydra were counterfeit money and documents, ransomware, hacker services and software, stolen personal information and stolen virtual currency. Hydra also offered employment opportunities, usually in the field of drug production and distribution. Drug stores paid for registration on "Hydra", then paid a monthly subscription fee and surcharges for the right to be higher in the search results for the search query. All transactions were made in cryptocurrency. Within a day after the purchase, the customer could leave a review about the "product" and the seller. The drug platform even had its own PR service, which issued public memos in the chat. So, at the end of 2019, an ICO was announced, where 49% of Hydra was going to sell at least 1.47 million tokens with a starting price of $100 dollars.
Given the interest of law enforcement officers in the illegal resource, Hydra constantly changed addresses and worked through a system of"mirror" sites (the analogy with a mythical monster is quite clear here — one head is cut off, another grows). The resource was identified by the screen saver with a three-headed dragon. It was possible to access the site in an anonymous browser " Tor " and only after overcoming a multi-level system of security codes (the so-called captcha).
One of the" mirrors "of" Hydra " in the fall of 2021 was covered up by prosecutors from Chapaevsk. As the Prosecutor's office of the Samara region reported at the time, " the prosecutor's office of Chapaevsk checked compliance with the requirements of legislation in the field of illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. In the course of monitoring the Internet, a site with information on illegal trafficking in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation, "Hydra", was found to be freely accessible. The posted information inclines to commit illegal actions, indicates the distribution and propaganda of drugs, which can lead to a threat to the life and health of an indefinite circle of people." The prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit to recognize the information posted on the site as prohibited, won the case and sent materials to Roskomnadzor to include the network address in the unified information system of domain names containing information prohibited for distribution on the territory of the Russian Federation. However, even then "Hydra" did not have long to work. In April 2022, the shadow marketplace was closed by the German police, who confiscated cryptocurrency worth approximately 23 million euros. Earlier, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Hydra. At the time of closing, 19 thousand stores were registered on Hydra.
After the elimination of the drug platform in the Russian darknet, a fierce competition for the vacant niche began, which is still going on.
NATALIA TSOI, Assistant Prosecutor of the Samara Region for Media Relations
The Volzhsky District Court of the Samara Region issued a verdict in a criminal case against four citizens. Depending on their role and degree of participation, they were found guilty under Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation and participation in a criminal community), part 3 of Article 186 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (production, storage, transportation or sale of counterfeit money or securities committed by an organized group).
The court found that in September 2020 in Samara, a local resident created a criminal community consisting of four functionally separate groups operating in St. Petersburg, Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Irkutsk, Samara regions, Primorsky and Perm Territories, the Republics of Crimea and Tatarstan, and established the sale of counterfeit banknotes with a value of 5 thousand rubles.
Fake bank cards were purchased in large quantities and sold through an online store on a website banned in the Russian Federation. The cost of a fake bill was about 50% of the face value, payment was accepted in cryptocurrency, and the goods were delivered through caches or in envelopes by courier service.
Lots of counterfeit money were transported in rented cars and stored in caches organized in a forest belt in the Leningrad region, a rented apartment in St. Petersburg and in private houses in the Samara region. Members of the criminal community committed 78 episodes of selling counterfeit bank notes.
The court agreed with the opinion of the state prosecutor and sentenced the organizer of the criminal community to 20 years in prison with a fine of 2 million rubles. Three other convicts were sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 14 to 16 years with fines from 900 thousand to 2 million rubles. They will serve their sentences in a high-security penal colony.
The defendants received from 14 to 20 years in a high-security penal colony. Fakes were sold through a store on the banned Hydra darknet platform; the scale of trade is also impressive: criminals managed to cover territories from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.
The large-scale case of the criminal community of counterfeiters, the leader of which was recognized by law enforcement officers as Samaritan Roman Tverdokhleb, began with a whole scattering of small criminal cases initiated in various regions of the Russian Federation in 2021-2022. Among the territories that surfaced during the investigation of the sale of counterfeit banknotes are Leninsky, Promyshlenniy, Krasnoglinsky districts of Samara, Volzhsky district of the Samara region, Tolyatti, Kaliningrad, Evpatoria, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Nizhnekamsk district of the Republic of Tatarstan, Nizhny Novgorod, Irkutsk, Tyumen, Vladivostok, Nytvensky district of Perm Krai. Later, this list was supplemented by St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region.
When it became clear that the same criminals "worked" in all cases of selling counterfeit five-thousand-dollar bills, all the non-regional episodes were combined into one large criminal case, which was under investigation by the investigative department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the Samara region.
According to the investigative body, in addition to its organizer Tverdokhleb, the criminal community included Vladimir Yudin, Igor Shcherbakov and Dmitry Gusarov. The period of their crimes is 2020-2022. The FAKE/MONEY online store of the optimized online platform hydraruzxpnew4af.onion, administered by Tverdokhleb, was used to sell fakes. This platform is one of the "mirrors" of the largest banned darknet platform in Russia, Hydra (for more information, see the text "Hydra was banned in Chapaevsk"). Tverdokhleb himself was present at the site under the nickname Hammer444, invented in honor of his favorite car "Hammer" with numbers 444.
On the FAKE / MONEY store page, it was possible to find (and operational employees subsequently did) correspondence with customers, data on the withdrawal of cryptocurrency, announcements about the recruitment of employees.
The business of OPS Tverdokhleb was built on tracing paper from drug shops, that is, the sale of counterfeit bills was carried out through caches- "bookmarks". The leader of the OPS bought the bills themselves in bulk on the same "Hydra" from unidentified persons in a store called "Elite". Forgeries were sent to remote regions of the Russian Federation by parcels of transport and logistics companies SDEK and Pony Express. Fictitious names were used for sending: Krygin Nikolay, Melnikov Dmitry, Klimov V. S., Kragin N. S., Melnikov O., Melnikov Dmitry, Prokhorov Dmitry. A significant part of the contractors of the OPS was also identified and condemned (one example of such "cooperation" is in the text "Cadets "threw" Chinese").
Earnings from the sale of counterfeit money were accumulated on an electronic wallet in the form of cryptocurrency, then with the help of exchange resources they were transferred to the bank cards of OPS participants.
Tverdokhleb told his accomplice Shcherbakov that he had several online stores selling fake bank notes. He handed over one store to management, the other worked for about six months and was closed.
OPS participant Vladimir Yudin is an old acquaintance of Roman Tverdokhleb, they lived next door in the village of Bereza. In 2020, Tverdokhleb called Yudin from St. Petersburg and offered him a job selling counterfeit money. Yudin was supposed to be engaged in packaging fakes, placing them in caches- "bookmarks" with further sending geotags to Tverdokhlebu. Accomplices ordered a wholesale batch of fakes in the amount of 100 pieces-it was taken from the forest "bookmarks" behind the Moscow Ring Road somewhere in the Moscow region. The bills were moved to a cache in a wooded area near St. Petersburg, from where they were taken away as needed and placed in small batches in other "bookmarks". For each new "bookmark" Yudin received 500-600 rubles on the card. In conversations, counterfeit bills were called "candy wrappers "and"pieces of paper". Later, Tverdokhleb returned to Samara and kept the fakes at home.
In Samara, the "pawnbroker" was Dmitry Gusarov, who took fakes from a cache in a Country Park, in a wooded area behind the Mega shopping mall, on the 9th clearing. Gusarov was paid less — 150 rubles for one "bookmark" made. Later, during interrogations, he tried to convince law enforcement officers that he was sure that the packages contained medical certificates, and not fake money.
In the summer of 2021, Igor Shcherbakov joined the criminal community, who offered Tverdokhleb to sell drugs on the promoted site. The organizer of the criminal community thought about it and agreed.
The first experience of selling a drug was successful. In a wooded area behind the village of Roshchinsky, a wholesale "bookmark" was found, where there were 100 grams of mephedrone, the drug was packaged and sold in small batches for 2,200 rubles per 1 gram. After some time, Tverdokhleb said that he wanted to sell the FAKE/MONEY store due to low profitability, and offered Shcherbakov to buy it for 450 thousand rubles. The deal took place, and the store began to sell only drugs, however, not for long. Already in November 2021, Shcherbakov was "taken" from a cache of mephedrone in the 67th quarter of the Samara forestry district.
It turned out that the police had been monitoring FAKE/MONEY for a long time. Employees of the UEBiPK of the regional State Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs installed the Tor browser, created a fake account Stuka163, from which several verification purchases of counterfeit banknotes were made from March to May 2021. Police officers had to search for stashes- "bookmarks" in the village of Dubovy Gai of the Volzhsky district, in the Krasnoglinsky district, in the forest park behind the Seredavin hospital and on the 7th clearing. After the arrest of Shcherbakov, the investigation went faster — he gave the security forces usernames and passwords from the store on "Hydra". Soon all members of the criminal community were identified and detained.
The criminal case against Roman Tverdokhleb was heard by the Volzhsky District Court of the Samara Region. Members of the criminal community were charged with Article 210 of the Criminal Code (creation and participation in a criminal community), part 3 of Article 186 of the Criminal Code (production, storage, transportation or sale of counterfeit money or securities committed by an organized group), and the leader of the community and Shcherbakov were also charged with illegal drug trafficking. Recently, a guilty verdict was announced in the case. According to the Prosecutor's Office of the Samara region, " the court agreed with the opinion of the state prosecutor and sentenced the organizer of the criminal community to 20 years in prison with a fine of 2 million rubles. Three other convicts were sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 14 to 16 years with fines from 900 thousand to 2 million rubles. They will serve their sentences in a high-security penal colony."
Cadets "threw" the Chinese
Among the victims of the actions of Roman Tverdokhleb's OPS are a whole group of Chinese traders from Vladivostok: Nguyen Van Ngoc, Cui Xiangqing, Truong Thi Xuan, Nguyen Thi Huong, Youong Thi Lieu, Nguyen Thi Chan. All of them worked at the Nekrasovsky market and the Second River fish market in Vladivostok.
Abusers of Chinese merchants are sailors-cadets Alexey Shvedchikov and Artem Kosterin, who ordered 10 fake five-thousandth notes for 18 thousand rubles in the FAKE/MONEY store on the darknet. To do this, Kosterin registered on "Hydra" under the nickname Shebal23457. Both defendants at that time lived in the hostel of the Admiral Nevelsky Maritime State University, where they were cadets.
As the accused reported during interrogations, a whole instruction on the" correct "sale of counterfeit banknotes was posted on Hydra . It was recommended to pay with fakes in markets where there is poor lighting and there are no machines for verifying the authenticity of banknotes. It is "necessary" to go and sell to at least two people, in different places and one bill each, and also to take measures to distract sellers. There was advice to keep a few small bills in your wallet and show the seller when purchasing goods that there is not enough money for the purchase and you will have to pay with a large five-thousandth bill.
Also in the case of Shvedchikov and Kosterin, there is a screenshot of the FAKE/MONEY store page. An ad was posted on the page: "This product can be purchased with delivery in Russia. We send them by Stealth (we hide bills in a toy / book, etc.). We ship exclusively in the 1st class. After sending it, you will receive a tracking track. WE WORK WITH THE GUARANTOR (what is the guarantor, is not explained. The minimum number of bills to send is 15 pieces. DELIVERY ACROSS THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IS ALREADY INCLUDED IN THE PRICE. Visit our forum" (original spelling is preserved).
The fakes were delivered to Vladivostok by courier. In February 2021, Shvedchikov and Kosterin made a trip to markets and supermarkets in order to sell fakes. They went to the" case " in cadet uniforms and medical masks. They bought all sorts of nonsense — ceramic mugs, men's underwear, home slippers, cheap sneakers, a floor mat, a knitted hat. Soon after, they were detained by police officers. The deceived Chinese told the same story: two guys came, paid for the products with a five-thousandth bill, then left. The police also seized fakes. Shvedchikov and Kosterin became defendants in a criminal case, and in the fall of 2023 they were sentenced to suspended sentences by the Pervorechenskiy District Court of Vladivostok. The defendants did not appeal the verdict.
"Hydra" banned in Chapaevsk
Until April 2022, Hydra, where the Samara counterfeiters ' store was located, was the most famous Russian drug platform and the world's largest resource in terms of illegal operations with cryptocurrency. Hydra was launched in 2015, and by mid-2019, 2.5 million accounts were registered on the resource. In 2020 alone, Hydra's revenue was $1.3 billion. The drug platform was associated with the name of Russian businessman Dmitry Pavlov.
In addition to drugs, the most popular products on Hydra were counterfeit money and documents, ransomware, hacker services and software, stolen personal information and stolen virtual currency. Hydra also offered employment opportunities, usually in the field of drug production and distribution. Drug stores paid for registration on "Hydra", then paid a monthly subscription fee and surcharges for the right to be higher in the search results for the search query. All transactions were made in cryptocurrency. Within a day after the purchase, the customer could leave a review about the "product" and the seller. The drug platform even had its own PR service, which issued public memos in the chat. So, at the end of 2019, an ICO was announced, where 49% of Hydra was going to sell at least 1.47 million tokens with a starting price of $100 dollars.
Given the interest of law enforcement officers in the illegal resource, Hydra constantly changed addresses and worked through a system of"mirror" sites (the analogy with a mythical monster is quite clear here — one head is cut off, another grows). The resource was identified by the screen saver with a three-headed dragon. It was possible to access the site in an anonymous browser " Tor " and only after overcoming a multi-level system of security codes (the so-called captcha).
One of the" mirrors "of" Hydra " in the fall of 2021 was covered up by prosecutors from Chapaevsk. As the Prosecutor's office of the Samara region reported at the time, " the prosecutor's office of Chapaevsk checked compliance with the requirements of legislation in the field of illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. In the course of monitoring the Internet, a site with information on illegal trafficking in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation, "Hydra", was found to be freely accessible. The posted information inclines to commit illegal actions, indicates the distribution and propaganda of drugs, which can lead to a threat to the life and health of an indefinite circle of people." The prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit to recognize the information posted on the site as prohibited, won the case and sent materials to Roskomnadzor to include the network address in the unified information system of domain names containing information prohibited for distribution on the territory of the Russian Federation. However, even then "Hydra" did not have long to work. In April 2022, the shadow marketplace was closed by the German police, who confiscated cryptocurrency worth approximately 23 million euros. Earlier, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Hydra. At the time of closing, 19 thousand stores were registered on Hydra.
After the elimination of the drug platform in the Russian darknet, a fierce competition for the vacant niche began, which is still going on.
NATALIA TSOI, Assistant Prosecutor of the Samara Region for Media Relations
The Volzhsky District Court of the Samara Region issued a verdict in a criminal case against four citizens. Depending on their role and degree of participation, they were found guilty under Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation and participation in a criminal community), part 3 of Article 186 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (production, storage, transportation or sale of counterfeit money or securities committed by an organized group).
The court found that in September 2020 in Samara, a local resident created a criminal community consisting of four functionally separate groups operating in St. Petersburg, Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Irkutsk, Samara regions, Primorsky and Perm Territories, the Republics of Crimea and Tatarstan, and established the sale of counterfeit banknotes with a value of 5 thousand rubles.
Fake bank cards were purchased in large quantities and sold through an online store on a website banned in the Russian Federation. The cost of a fake bill was about 50% of the face value, payment was accepted in cryptocurrency, and the goods were delivered through caches or in envelopes by courier service.
Lots of counterfeit money were transported in rented cars and stored in caches organized in a forest belt in the Leningrad region, a rented apartment in St. Petersburg and in private houses in the Samara region. Members of the criminal community committed 78 episodes of selling counterfeit bank notes.
The court agreed with the opinion of the state prosecutor and sentenced the organizer of the criminal community to 20 years in prison with a fine of 2 million rubles. Three other convicts were sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 14 to 16 years with fines from 900 thousand to 2 million rubles. They will serve their sentences in a high-security penal colony.
