Fraudsters in Samara stole 15 million rubles from "Pushkin cards"

Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Samara opened a criminal case under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on fraud on a particularly large scale committed by an organized group on the fact of illegal cashing of budgetary funds through "Pushkin Cards".

"The organizer Grigory Mokeev and his two accomplices Artem Korabel and Vladislav Mikheev have been detained", - Kommersant notes.

According to State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein, in the summer of this year, entrepreneur Grigory Mokeev organized the "Theater of New Time", which was verified on the Pro portal.Culture.The Russian Federation and entered the federal project "Pushkin map".

Participants of the fraudulent scheme rented halls to show performances of the Samara Institute of Culture (SGIK) there. The actors in them were university graduates who failed to get a job in professional theaters. The participants of the scheme made reports on the full halls they allegedly collected, but in fact there were almost no spectators. Tickets cost 3 — 3.5 thousand rubles, this amount is considered "cosmic" for Samara.

The money was cashing out through students, whom they found through databases. The scammers paid them 1.5-2 thousand rubles in cash in exchange for PIN codes for their "Pushkin cards" with a card face value of 5 thousand rubles. Having received the full data, the suspects bought tickets using these cards themselves, and then reset the student cards. In total, they managed to earn at least 15 million rubles in six months. In total, the suspects are charged with 12 episodes of criminal activity.

During searches of false showmen, the security forces found computer databases with the data of more than 5 thousand students.

After the incident, the deputy proposed to the Ministry of Culture to adjust the verification process of the participants of the Pushkin Map project in order to put a barrier to fraudsters not only in Samara, but also all over the country.

For the first time, the Pushkin Map project was launched in Russia in September 2021. Through the portal "Gosuslugi" or bank applications, every citizen of the Russian Federation aged 14 to 22 years is issued a virtual or real plastic "Pushkin Card", to which 5 thousand rubles are allocated from the federal budget. The cardholder can spend these funds during the year on visiting theaters, cinemas, museums and concerts. The cardholder cannot cash out the funds independently.

More than 325 thousand young people from 14 to 22 years old became the owners of the "Pushkin Card" in the Moscow region this year. In total, the number of participants in the project included more than 7 million people, although the program has been running for a little more than a year.