Former police chief Yuri Zaitsev was recently sentenced
to eight years in prison for acting as a bounty hunter for a dark web
marketplace. In December 2018, Zaitsev was working as the leader of his
unit within the Main Directorate for Drugs Control of the Republic of
Khakassia — a law enforcement division analogous to the United States
Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA. At that time, he initiated
contact with the operator of a darknet marketplace, offering to help
hunt down a man who had appropriated drugs that were entrusted to him
for placement in dead drops. 

In Russia, unlike the U.S., most
dark web entrepreneurs do not trust the post office for shipments. The
prevailing mode of dissemination of these illegal products is instead
completed through dead drops — a method of delivery by which two parties
can pass items or information back and forth without ever needing to
meet in person.

According to the Main Investigation Department, the cop received the equivalent of 52,000 rubles in Bitcoin (BTC)
for his services. At the time, this was equivalent to approximately
$750 U.S. doll, or 0.2 BTC. He was found guilty on charges of bribery
and the disclosure of classified information.

According to Zaitsev's wife, his prosecution was
punishment for investigating senior officials within his agency. He was
subsequently fired and prosecuted. From October–November 2019, Zaitsev uploaded
a number of videos to YouTube in which he allegedly exposed corruption
among senior officials in his Directorate. This appears to be what led
to criminal charges against him for the disclosure of classified
information. In November 2019, Zaitsev uploaded an appeal to President Vladimir Putin on YouTube in which he pleaded his case, but to no avail.

During the unrelated Silk Road investigation, numerous law enforcement officials fell
afoul to what they perceived as easy, untraceable Bitcoin. DEA Special
Agent Carl Force managed to elicit 1,200 Bitcoin from Ross Ulbricht. He
obtained the funds using an elaborate scheme in which he created
multiple fake personas ranging from a major South American drug
trafficker to a corrupt law enforcement official. One of the tasks
assigned to him by Ulbricht was hunting down and murdering a former
associate who had allegedly stolen Bitcoin from him. The actual thief
was another law enforcement official involved in the investigation. The
murder was staged by Force but never materialized in actuality.

The
events that took place in Khakasia a few years after the Silk Road saga
seem in some ways like a cheap local knockoff of an expensive HBO show.
As Karl Marx once said, history repeats itself “the first time as
tragedy, the second as farce.”

source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/crooked-police-chief-sentenced-to-8-years-for-dark-web-shenanigans