Russian security forces take on schoolchildren who are droppers (drop service owners)

[Man]

Since the beginning of 2025, Russian security agencies have stepped up the fight against droppers. As reported by the Telegram channel "Payment Shield", law enforcement agencies are interested not only in those who transfer their bank account data, but also in those who buy it.

"It has become obvious that the authorities' course on combating droppers is more than serious. Assistant prosecutors have begun to go to educational institutions of secondary and higher vocational education and ask students to hand over people who were agitating to sell their bank cards - that is, they are looking for droppers," the post says.

To confirm these words, the channel published a photo of a document from the Nizhny Novgorod region, signed by the deputy head of the Borsky city prosecutor's office. The author asks the director of one of the educational institutions to provide him with information about 11 students at once, in relation to whom "an investigation is being conducted into involvement in dubious operations." According to the Payment Shield, this practice can be scaled up and “similar raids will take place all over the country.”

“The audience was not chosen by chance: teenagers are afraid, nervous, and unable to resist panicking in stressful situations. Law enforcement officials call their actions preventive, but everyone understands that minors cannot be interrogated without parents or legal representatives. The authorities are not interested in any kind of prevention — they are interested in eradicating drug trafficking as a sphere and started with the most vulnerable group of the population,” the authors stated.