Translated material
Past the cash register
The organizers of the production of counterfeit metro tickets were sentenced
The other day, the verdict of the Kuntsevsky District Court of Moscow in the case of a group of swindlers who launched the mass production and sale of counterfeit tickets for travel on the capital’s metro came into legal force. They operated for several years, and it is not even known how many fakes they sold during this time. The investigation was able to prove that the group produced about 110 thousand tickets worth about 6.4 million rubles, but this, according to experts, is only a small part of the true volume of counterfeit production.Due to this, and also since all the defendants repented and admitted guilt, asking to consider their case in a special manner - without examining the evidence, the sentence turned out to be quite lenient. All the defendants in the case remained free, having received only suspended sentences or fines, including the organizers of the scam - former electricians of the signaling and communications service of the State Unitary Enterprise "Moscow Metro" Evgeny Mukhin and Vladimir Romashov.
As follows from the verdict, employees of the Department of Economic Crimes of the Internal Affairs Directorate at the metro began this investigation in December 2008, according to information from the subway administration. The presence of illegal competitors was detected based on several signs, but primarily due to a shortage at the box office - many more tickets were used to get into the metro than were sold at the box office, which resulted in a shortage.
Investigators found that counterfeit tickets were being sold en masse on portable trays in passages and at metro entrances. Outwardly, they were almost no different from the real ones and, since there are often long queues at the metro ticket offices, they sold well. The traders were under surveillance. As a result, suppliers of counterfeits were identified. On December 18, 2008, the Main Investigation Department (GIS) of the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate opened a criminal case under Art. 165-3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (causing property damage to the owner through deception and abuse of trust in the absence of signs of theft, organized by a group, on an especially large scale). But for more than two months, operatives continued to monitor the swindlers, figuring out the entire scheme for the production and sale of counterfeits.
Mass searches and arrests took place in early February last year. An underground ticket production workshop was discovered at Skolkovskoe Highway, 8. At the same time, five main suspects were detained - Mukhin and Romashov, as well as their accomplices - unemployed Alexander Olifirenko, Marina Batashvili and Oleg Simonchuk, who were engaged in supplying goods to retailers.
As it turned out during the investigation, Mukhin and Romashov met at the Kuntsevsky Radio-Mechanical College, where they studied in the same course and after which they went to work together in the metro in 2004. Mukhin did not stay there for long - he soon resigned of his own free will due to an incident involving the disappearance of a hard drive with information from a ticket vending machine. He himself then assured that he had nothing to do with the theft, but it was not possible to prove the opposite.
But already during interrogations within the framework of this criminal case, he admitted that, while still working in the metro, together with Romashov he tried to sell “a computer program for encoding tickets.” The hackers who were willing to pay for it were unable to hack the program, and therefore never paid. However, they offered to help Mukhin and Romashov set up the production of counterfeit tickets of the then current type - cards that had to be inserted into a special receiver when passing through the turnstile.
To do this, the friends rented an apartment on Bobruiskaya Street, and the customers provided them with a computer and a card reader (a device for encoding magnetic cards). As Mukhin told investigators, production was quite primitive back then. Through intermediaries, they bought garbage from bins installed at the turnstiles, where used tickets are usually thrown, and recoded them. The finished tickets were handed over to customers, who sold them themselves. From each ticket sold, as Mukhin testified, he received 1.5-2.5 rubles, and divided the proceeds equally with Romashov.
Despite its simplicity, such a business turned out to be very profitable, and soon Mukhin invited Romashov to organize his own production of counterfeits. They purchased equipment, but did not really have time to “turn around.” Since 2008, the metro introduced a new type of tickets - the so-called ultralight, which worked on a different principle than the previous ones. When passing through the turnstile, you only need to attach them to the indicated point. Accordingly, they use other types of encoding and reading information.
Since Romashov continued to work in the metro all this time, he was able to copy the “ultralight” ticket encoding program, special codes (keys) necessary for the device that reads the information on the ticket to correctly understand the data contained on the ticket (the ticket belongs to the State Unitary Enterprise “Moscow Metro”, view ticket, number of passes, ticket validity, etc.). In addition, as the investigation established, he also wrote a new computer program for recording information on an “ultralight” ticket at home. For this, according to the investigation, Romashov received 100 thousand rubles.
Already at the end of January 2008, Mukhin, through an intermediary, rented an apartment on Skolkovskoye Highway and installed new equipment there - computers, inkjet printers for printing metro symbols on tickets, a card reader, a validator (a device used in a metro turnstile to read information) and a terminal with fare payment system software. To make the fakes look like real ones, Mukhin, according to investigators, abandoned the use of old real tickets and decided to purchase real blanks. To do this, he turned to the management of two companies - Visual and Electronic Control Systems Company LLC and Control-V LLC, which supplied forms of real tickets for the metro.
In order not to arouse suspicion, Mukhin, as follows from the case materials, introduced himself to the subway suppliers as an adviser to the chairman of the control and audit commission of the United Russia party for the North-Western Administrative District (NWAD) of Moscow. He told businessmen that his organization was allegedly going to replace “regular” party tickets with electronic ones - just like “ultralight” tickets. As stated in the criminal case, “unaware of the criminal intentions” of the customer, the businessmen produced 110 thousand pieces of forms for him.
Having received the blanks, the partners quickly programmed them, printed the metro logos on them and hired distributors, including Marina Batashvili, Alexander Olifirenko and Oleg Simonchuk. The following tickets were sold - for two and five trips for 25 and 50 rubles. accordingly, usually at the busiest metro stations: “Kyiv”, “Petrovsko-Razumovskaya”, “Vykhino”, “Novogireevo”, “Kuzminki”, “Rechnoy Vokzal”.
Investigators did not rule out that the scale of ticket production was much larger, but they were able to prove that only this one batch of 110 thousand pieces was sold. Accordingly, based on it, the damage caused to the metro was calculated - 6.4 million rubles.
“The accused first admitted guilt, and then refused to testify,” senior investigator of the 1st department of the investigative unit of the State Investigative Directorate, captain of justice Alexey Kozubsky, told Vremya Novostey. - But at the trial they again decided to confess, agreeing to a special order. However, the investigation did not end there. Another case was separated from the main case - in relation to active members of a criminal group who escaped from the investigation.”