The Cheremushkinsky District Court found the perpetrators guilty of planning to abduct a businessman in an attempt to seize his cryptocurrency.
As as reported on the Moscow courts’ website, the sentence is being prepared for publication, but the Investigative Committee’s Main Directorate has already confirmed the decision.
According to the investigation, in 2018 one of the case’s defendants, Karlen Meliksetyan, learned that the head of the organization where he worked at the time owned 275 BTC.
He decided to kidnap the businessman to seize the cryptocurrency and shared the plan with an associate named Goryunov, who then enlisted Georgiy Lyamin, Pavel Batetchko and Alexey Hamilonov.
The perpetrators planned to abduct the businessman to extort bitcoins. However the businessman learned of the plan and turned to law enforcement. They staged the kidnapping, and as a result all defendants were detained, according to the Investigative Committee.
During the search, about 30 firearms and ammunition were seized.
Lyamin received 10 years in a high-security penal colony, Hamilonov — 8 years and 6 months, Batetchko — 8 years. Meliksetyan was sentenced by the court to 5 years in a strict-regime penal colony.
Goryunov reached a pre-trial agreement during the preliminary investigation, and as a result his case was considered separately. He received 3 years in a strict-regime penal colony.
Earlier it was reported that Meliksetyan and Goryunov organized an attempted kidnapping of the head of Gold Miners Russia Group Evgeny Voronkin in order to gain access to his 10,000 BTC.
Meliksetyan was also named as a suspect in the case of the murder of crypto billionaire Eduard Evstafyev.
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