A Moscow court has sentenced two young men and a 16-year-old girl after they staged a car crash and assaulted a traffic police officer.
Each of the adult defendants was ordered to serve two years in a general-regime penal colony and pay a fine of 20,000 rubles. The teenage girl received a 1.5-year suspended sentence.
The Moscow prosecutor's office confirmed the outcome of the case, informing news outlet Lenta.ru that all three individuals were convicted of extortion by an organized group, using violence against a public official, and insulting a representative of the state.
Staged collision on Maroseyka Street
According to investigators, the incident took place on June 28 on Maroseyka Street in central Moscow. The group staged a road accident involving the underage girl and demanded 10,000 rubles from the driver of a foreign car to avoid further consequences.
When an inspector from the road patrol service arrived at the scene, two of the convicted individuals attacked him. Investigators said the men assaulted the officer, shouted verbal abuse at him, and deliberately damaged the video recording device attached to his uniform to conceal what they had done.
The confrontation was captured on camera, and video footage showing the convicted crash fraudsters had previously surfaced during the investigation.
Staged crash scams in Russia
Staged vehicular accidents, known in Russia as avtopodstavy, are a persistent extortion problem on Russian roads. In these schemes, scammers deliberately simulate collisions with pedestrians or vehicles and intimidate motorists into handing over immediate cash settlements to avoid involving traffic police or insurance firms.
Maroseyka Street is a historic and busy commercial thoroughfare in the Basmanny District of central Moscow, situated less than a mile east of the Kremlin. Road patrol inspectors, known in Russia as DPS officers, operate under the State Traffic Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and are responsible for enforcing road safety and investigating traffic incidents.
General-regime penal colonies are standard-security detention institutions in the Russian correctional system, where inmates live in communal barracks. The court ruling brings an end to the criminal case after prosecutors secured convictions against all three defendants.
