The Kstovo City Court of the Nizhny Novgorod region has begun examining the criminal case of an interregional criminal group, which over two years managed to print and sell about 1 billion counterfeit rubles. The information has been reported by Kommersant.
Communication and settlements with buyers took place on the Hydra darknet marketplace. Payments were sent to a cryptocurrency wallet. After that, the sellers, using fraudulent passports, forwarded batches of counterfeit notes to their accomplices via a Moscow-based transport company. They placed them in stash caches and passed the coordinates to buyers.
The first counterfeit banknotes with denominations of 2,000 and 5,000 rubles were detected in Tatarstan. Soon the fakes began to appear in almost all regions of Russia.
Investigators established that the printing press was located in Nizhny Novgorod. During searches, police seized color laser printers, laptops, banknote mockups, a laminator, threads for embedding into banknotes, and blanks for images of coats of arms. Police also found counterfeit notes ready for shipment totaling 800,000 rubles.
According to investigators, wholesale batches from 500,000 rubles were sold for 10–15% of face value. Demand in the regions was highest for small lots — from 10,000 to 150,000 rubles. They sold these for 30% of nominal value.
In addition to making and distributing counterfeit notes, the defendants are charged with organizing and taking part in an organized crime group. The defendants pleaded guilty.
Earlier ForkLog reported that Hydra sellers devised “stash system” for anonymous withdrawal of Bitcoin.
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