Former FSB officers sentenced to 9 and 12 years in prison for extorting a bribe in Bitcoin

The court sentenced two former FSB investigators, Sergey Belousov and Alexey Kolbov, to nine and twelve years in a strict-regime prison for extorting a large bribe in cryptocurrency, according to TASS.

The convicts were also stripped of their ranks.

According to the verdict, they received 4.8 BTC (over 16.5 million rubles at the rate at the time of writing).

Sergey Belousov and Alexey Kolbov were detained in 2019. They were accused of extorting 65 million rubles in bitcoins from the son of former Izvestia publisher Erast Galumov. The latter was convicted of fraud.

Investigators promised to soften the sentence for Erast Galumov and not to hold his son criminally liable.

Kolbov admitted to fraud, but denied receiving a bribe.

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