{"id":41384,"date":"2021-04-26T10:23:44","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T07:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=41384"},"modified":"2025-08-30T18:34:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T15:34:13","slug":"scammers-in-russia-sold-around-1-billion-rubles-worth-of-counterfeit-notes-for-cryptocurrency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/scammers-in-russia-sold-around-1-billion-rubles-worth-of-counterfeit-notes-for-cryptocurrency\/","title":{"rendered":"Scammers in Russia sold around 1 billion rubles’ worth of counterfeit notes for cryptocurrency"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> by Kommersant.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

According to investigators, wholesale batches from 500,000 rubles were sold for 10\u201315% of face value. Demand in the regions was highest for small lots \u2014 from 10,000 to 150,000 rubles. They sold these for 30% of nominal value.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Earlier ForkLog reported that Hydra sellers devised “stash system”<\/a> for anonymous withdrawal of Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to ForkLog news on Telegram: ForkLog Feed<\/a> \u2014 the full feed of news, ForkLog<\/a> \u2014 the most important news, infographics and opinions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Kstovo City Court in the Nizhny Novgorod region began examining the criminal case of an interregional criminal group that, over two years, managed to print and sell about 1 billion counterfeit rubles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[386,1162,1154,1720,27],"class_list":["post-41384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-cash","tag-court-cases","tag-crimes","tag-hydra","tag-russia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"21","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41386,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41384\/revisions\/41386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}