The Moscow Butyrsky Court has handed down a harsh sentence to three former Moscow police officers convicted of a large-scale cryptocurrency fraud scheme. The defendants were found guilty of stealing more than 30 million rubles from user accounts on the Garantex exchange using forged court rulings. Their sentences range from 12 to 14 years in a strict-regime penal colony.
Details of the Verdict
The harshest punishment—14 years—was handed to former Lieutenant Colonel Renat Bakhtiev from the Bureau of Special Technical Measures. His accomplices, investigator Antonina Shakina and operative Leonid Golubev, each received 12 years in a penal colony. The court also stripped them of their special ranks—lieutenant colonel, major, and police captain, respectively—and ordered each to pay a fine of 6.5 million rubles.
Notably, during the closing arguments, the prosecutor had requested stricter measures: 15 years in a strict-regime colony for Bakhtiev, 14.5 years for Golubev, and 13 years for Shakina. The prosecution also insisted on collecting fines and satisfying the victims' claims totaling over 30 million rubles. Shakina admitted guilt only partially, which is likely to become grounds for an appeal by the defense.
The Mechanics of the Criminal Scheme
The criminal case was opened in the spring of 2023 following a complaint from Alexander Sazonov, a resident of St. Petersburg, who discovered an attempted unauthorized withdrawal of 24.8 million rubles from his deposit account on Garantex. The criminals acted boldly: first, a forged ruling on the seizure of the claimant's assets, signed by a Basmanny Court judge, was sent to the exchange, followed by a fictitious document lifting the seizure.
During the investigation, a broader network was uncovered. Investigators established the defendants' involvement in the theft of an additional 6.2 million rubles from two other exchange clients—Mikhail Korniychuk from the Tver region and Agakerim Gamzabekov from the Moscow region. Golubev, using a work computer, requested wallet balances, while Shakina fabricated criminal cases and rulings to legitimize access to the funds.
Context of Pressure on Garantex
This verdict is only part of the systemic pressure on the platform. In August 2025, the U.S. Department of the Treasury expanded its sanctions list to include key Garantex operators and related projects, including GRINEX and InDeFi SmartBank. Analysts at TRM Labs note that after the seizure of servers, the exchange effectively relaunched under the Grinex brand with nearly identical code and interface. According to Global Ledger estimates, approximately $34 million remained in wallets linked to Garantex, with a significant portion of the funds already paid out to former users through mixers and cross-chain bridges.
My analysis: This case demonstrates that even law enforcement officers tasked with combating cybercrime are not immune to the temptation of easy money in the crypto sphere. However, what matters more for the market is this: Garantex continues to operate despite sanctions and criminal prosecutions, indicating the high resilience of the shadow infrastructure. Investors should consider the risks of working with such platforms, where asset security can be compromised not only by external threats but also by internal abuses.