“Officers of the MIA of Russia Main Directorate of Economic Security and Combatting Corruption, together with colleagues from the Republic of Tatarstan, the Udmurt Republic, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod regions, with the participation of the Rosgvardia, prevented the activities of a group of persons suspected of manufacturing and selling counterfeit money.

It was established that in the office premises and at their places of residence in the Nizhny Novgorod Region the offenders organized the production of counterfeit bank notes of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation with a view to their subsequent sale in Russia. Distribution of counterfeited banknotes was carried out in a non-contact way through caches. The cache fillers handed over their coordinates to accomplices, who in turn collected the banknotes and split them into smaller lots. Then, via the Internet, they searched for buyers to whom they sent fakes using the services of transport companies.

For the purpose of secrecy, communication between the group members was carried out through a website in the shadow segment of the Internet using software preventing the IP address identification. Payment for the goods was executed using crypto-currency through anonymized electronic wallets registered on the same resource.

Twenty criminal cases were instituted on the grounds of a crime stipulated by Article 186 of the RF Criminal Code.

As a result of operational-search measures, two alleged organizers of the group and four accomplices were detained. Placement to custody was selected as the preventive measure for them.

During the searches, printing equipment was discovered with which banknotes had been made. The equipment included color laser printers, laptops, a laminator, threads for gluing into banknotes and blank images of shields of arms. Counterfeit banknotes worth more than eight hundred thousand rubles and technical equipment for accessing the on-line store through which the sale was carried out were also seized.

The preliminary criminal investigation is on-going,” said the official spokesperson for the Russian MIA Irina Volk.