Russia begins selling 1,032.1 Bitcoins seized in Infraud hacker organization case

TASS news agency reported that Russia had begun selling the Bitcoins it seized during a 2023 probe into the Infraud hacker group. The agency revealed that the Russian Treasury had initiated the transfer, beginning with $10 million worth of BTC of the 1,032 Bitcoins confiscated.

The country also initiated the seizure of properties from the former Russian Investigative Committee investigator Marat Tambiev, including a Honda motorcycle and real estate properties. Bailiffs also acknowledged that they fined Tambiev 500 million rubles (almost $5 million) and stripped him of his rank as a major.

Moscow initiates Bitcoin selloff from Infraud hacker group case

The country found Tambiev guilty of receiving a bribe from the Infraud hacker group last year. Prosecutors in the case also found hundreds of Bitcoins on the former investigator’s computer and storage devices. Tambiev was later found guilty of receiving 1,032.1 BTC from the hacker group and was jailed for 16 years in a maximum-security penal colony.

Officers of the court tried to liquidate the entire 1,032.1 Bitcoins but faced complicated legal hurdles. The former investigator had divided the digital assets into several amounts, which required bailiffs to file separate court rulings to grant Moscow access to the coins. The bailiffs revealed that Tambiev had stored the coins on a Ledger Nano X hard crypto wallet. Prosecutors also suggested that Tambiev had passed some digital assets to family members like his uncle, Shagaban Kubanov, who was also a co-defendant.

In July last year, Marina Odintsova, the head of the Kirov branch of the Association of Lawyers of Russia, mentioned a sharp rise in non-cash bribery using crypto and other assets in the country.

“We have recently seen cryptocurrency involved in bribery cases. Cryptocurrency is the sector that is the least controlled by the state. And it is extremely difficult to track transfers made using crypto. However, it is not impossible.”

~ Marina Odintsova, head of the Kirov branch of the Association of Lawyers of Russia.

The bailiffs successfully convinced a court to let them sell off $10 million worth of cryptocurrencies. The news agency confirmed that “a source familiar with the case” had revealed prosecutors also planned to sell off a further cache of Bitcoin “worth several million rubles.”

The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation also filed a new lawsuit against Tambiev in November 2024, demanding that his other properties be transferred to the state. The lawsuit highlighted that the acquisition of Tambiev’s properties was also not confirmed. 

TASS revealed that a source familiar with the case confirmed that the property the prosecutors wanted to transfer included a Honda motorcycle, several real estate properties in the Moscow region, and BTC worth several million rubles.

Court sentences Tambiev and his associates for receiving bribes

The Balashikha court of Russia previously sentenced the former Russian Investigative Committee investigator to 16 years and fined him 500 million rubles. The court also found his former subordinate, Kristina Lyakhovenko, guilty of accepting bribes and exceeding her authority. Lyakhovenko was sentenced to 9 years for abuse of power and falsifying evidence and the results of operational search activities. 

The court also revealed that the third defendant, Dmitry Gubin, former deputy head of the Investigative Department of the Central Administrative District of Moscow’s Tverskoy District, had gone into hiding from law enforcement.

The prosecution and investigation findings also revealed that the former investigators had extorted a bribe from members of the Infraud Organization hacking group. The findings also noted that the organized group of former investigators received the bribe in exchange for dropping the Infraud Organization’s criminal prosecution.

The Infraud hacker group reported the alleged bribe to the Federal Security Service and was later found guilty of cybercrime offenses. The group was later handed jail sentences of two and a half to three years.

The criminal case was the largest bribery incident in the Russian Federation’s history, as the former investigators received Bitcoins equivalent to 14 billion rubles (~$137 million). Tambiev told the court that he rejected all offers of cooperation and pleaded guilty. The former investigator also defended Lyakhovenko and called her a “child and victim.”

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