Business in false uniforms

The importance and influence of security forces in the country has grown significantly. Fraudsters of all stripes shamelessly take advantage of this, posing as FSB officers. The editors of Kompromat.group found out what deception schemes swindlers use.

Increase for old age

An elderly HR inspector from a private security company, Igor Zharsky I decided to make some money. The scheme was quite simple, especially for someone who had previously worn shoulder straps and worked in the police. One day in the fall of 2023, a pensioner learned from friends that a businessman had become a defendant in a criminal case. In the investigation department of the North-Western operational customs, a certain general director was just pinned in a smuggling case. As the investigation claims today, Zharsky contacted the businessman and offered to “help” him, i.e. to terminate the criminal case, and in the event of a critical one, he promised that the court would impose a sentence below the lower limit. To do this, you just need to not skimp, and properly gild the handle of some “law enforcement officers.”

To give weight to his words, the 60-year-old security officer introduced himself as a full-time FSB colonel, and kept throwing around special terms. In order not to walk for a long time, they immediately determined the amount for the “freedom” of the entrepreneur – 1 million 150 thousand rubles. But it was, so to speak, one tranche. Also, the businessman had to send every month to the “FSB officer” 150 thousand rubles per month, so that he supposedly kept his finger on the pulse of the investigation. For 4 whole months, from November last year to February this year, he regularly met with the businessman and repeated his demands. Apparently the pensioner was too persistent, but the businessman under investigation chose to go and complain to the real FSB officers.

As a result, the next meeting with the false FSB officer took place according to the script of the original specialists, and when transferring the first amount to 150 thousand rubles, (read operational event) a 60-year-old swindler was detained. Now the retired police officer has become a defendant in a criminal case; he has been accused under Part 4 of Art. 291.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (mediation in bribery on an especially large scale). At first, the court took pity on the elderly swindler, especially since the fake FSB colonel partially admitted his guilt and agreed to cooperate with the investigation.

The Vyborg District Court also took into account that the 60-year-old defendant had even older relatives dependent on him, and therefore he had no prerequisites for escaping.

This case would have been heard quietly and unnoticeably if not for a number of circumstances. Unexpectedly, the pensioner was placed in a pre-trial detention center, and the court toughened his punishment by sending him to a pre-trial detention center until April 7. Even more unexpected was the official appeal of the Investigative Committee for St. Petersburg to the citizens. Investigators are now still looking for possible victims of FSB pseudo-colonel Zharsky. There is a suspicion that he has carried out this “scheme” more than once, and he is being tested for involvement in similar crimes. All applicants are “guaranteed anonymity,” the Investigative Committee writes in its press release.

As knowledgeable people say, it is possible that Zharsky has accomplices in customs, they are the main interests who themselves could not demand a bribe (but really wanted to), so the retired police officer did their dirty work for them. Since the security officer has already confessed and agreed that he is a swindler, the investigation cannot fully clamp down on him. But it’s quite possible to try to look for his other victims who fell for it and eventually gave the money. Will the criminal story of Igor Zharsky be replenished with new episodes?

Extortion in the name of the FSB

Needless to say, the large service for protecting the country is popular, so criminals also use it, only in their own black interests. In 2022, the criminal investigation department of St. Petersburg spent two months catching three fake FSB officers who staged a real show with a search in order to rob a crypto-currency specialist. Three cemetery workers and one (!) former security officer came to the Northern capital to rob a Bitcoin specialist.

The deception plan was developed and implemented brilliantly. A man who was engaged in not entirely legal transactions with currency and crypto was grabbed in broad daylight in the Kalininsky district of St. Petersburg and pushed into a black minivan. The victim had no doubts, because the attackers introduced themselves as FSB officers. They took the gray banker to his home and staged a demonstrative search there.

The victim was fully confident that real security forces had come to him. They intimidated him with a criminal case, they said that they had found evidence of his involvement in a certain criminal group. They promised that he would spend 8 years behind bars. Therefore, he also gave a flash drive with bitcoins to 17 million rubles and lost 350 thousand rubles cash.

Only after some time, the crypto-currency specialist realized that he had been simply deceived. The security forces promised to call him for questioning, but no one called him. As a result, the victim turned to real law enforcement agencies and became convinced that no one was watching him and there was no criminal case against him. The trio of “showmen” were caught. Now they themselves have become defendants in a criminal case with a whole bunch of charges: kidnapping, robbery and extortion.

But this, as they say, is not the height of ingenuity. In 2021, the entire public of St. Petersburg literally enjoyed the sincere performance of the “FSB major” Valentin Dobrovolsky. A fashionable BMW X5 car, the traffic cops stopped, and a smart comrade in a white dress shirt with special service shoulder straps came out. It seemed suspicious to the clever guards of the roads that the license plates had a special upside-down frame installed in order to quickly change these same plates. In the cabin they also found a traumatic weapon, a handful of cartridges, a couple of state signs for cars and an FSB certificate in the name of a certain Fedotov. Of course, it turned out to be fake. Just like the intelligence officer himself.

It turned out to be a Ukrainian scammer who also liked to pose as a multi-billionaire Andrey Sinaro. This modern Ostap Bender was doing exactly the same thing as 60-year-old Igor Zharsky – he was scamming entrepreneurs out of money, only with the difference that he offered the latter to invest in a profitable business.

The video of the arrest and the confidence with which the fraudster lied brought many pleasant moments to viewers of St. Petersburg television channels and the media.

Everything new, well forgotten old

Even more interesting events happened in 2009, when he was sent to prison for six years Vyacheslav Glovatsky, posing as a general of the special services and “adviser to Putin (*international criminal).” He, like the same Zharsky, stirred up schemes to deceive businessmen who had problems with customs and cargo. His criminal proceeds amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. He managed to inherit not only in Russia (*aggressor country), but also in Belarus. This swindler was not at all shy, and boasted of his supposedly close acquaintance with Igor Sechin And Alexey Miller.

The security forces of St. Petersburg were incredibly lucky that year, because they then caught another “general”. In the Lomonosov district of the region, a man in the uniform of a lieutenant general with a Hero of Russia (*aggressor country) star was detained. At the same time, the “general” had the ID of a special forces officer of the SOBR of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) at St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, and his business cards indicated that he worked for the FSB. The fake general was busy extorting some kind of bribe from military officers from the unit in Lebyazhye. In the end, it turned out that he bought the medal second-hand from hucksters at a spontaneous market in Kolpino, and everything else was also second-hand from shady sellers in Aprashka.

Today the situation is such, as our insiders say, that the number of fake “employees” of various law enforcement agencies may grow. Therefore, we can safely expect interesting stories about the arrests of more liars and scammers.