Two Russian residents were sentenced to nine and seven years in prison for extorting 5 million rubles (almost $90,000) in cash and 55 million rubles (nearly $1 million) in digital assets from another individual under a rigorous regime.
The St. Petersburg City Court has acknowledged cryptocurrencies as a form of payment during the trial, according to the crypto website of Russian business news portal RBC. The verdict is a first, according to prosecutors, because the Russian government has yet to decide on the legal status of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Four years ago, Pyotr Piron, one of the criminals, introduced himself to the victim, G.A. Shemet, as a Federal Security Service officer (FSB). According to the story, he threatened Shemet with criminal prosecution in order to extract money from him in fiat and cryptocurrencies.
Piron solicited the help of an accomplice, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former employee of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, because Shemet did not think Piron was a security agent and refused to give him the money (MVD).
They informed Shemet that a criminal probe into his alleged unlawful bitcoin circulation would be begun. They organised a bogus arrest of the crypto owner in the summer of 2018, and he handed over his fiat cash and crypto cache under threat of torture.
The plundered cryptocurrency was not taken into consideration in the city court’s initial verdict. The ruling said that cryptocurrency “is not a form of payment on Russian Federation territory, so it cannot be considered as a topic of civil rights and a crime.”
Following an appeal, a cassation court ruled that cryptocurrencies can still be used as a payment method and remanded the case to the first instance court. The city court announced a revised decision that included the digital cash without modifying the defendants’ sentence terms.
This comes after a district judge in St. Petersburg allowed law enforcement personnel to seize stolen cryptocurrency in another criminal case earlier this month. Investigators had requested the seizure of a suspect’s two dozen cryptocurrency wallets, which contained 1 billion rubles in ethereum (ETH).
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