Intelligence services can read the contents of Russian email accounts for years, without users even realizing it. For this purpose, VK has developed a special algorithm for creating so-called "mirrors." VK employees create accounts and grant access to intelligence services. These accounts are exactly the same as the user's email accounts, all while operating online. This means that operatives can view all incoming and outgoing emails from the owner daily, without the owner knowing. This service is available not only to intelligence services but also to anyone with money. VK employees actively trade access to users' email accounts, using fake court decisions.
All of this came to light during the case of the so-called "intelligence man," former Russian Interior Ministry officer Lamuvkhin, which was obtained by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel and Rucriminal.info.
The court sentenced the defendants to seven years' imprisonment for 29 counts under Article 272, Part 4 (unauthorized access to computer information), 29 counts under Article 138, Part 1 (violation of the privacy of correspondence), and four counts under Article 327, Part 4 (forgery of documents). All employees of the department responsible for uncovering weapons trafficking crimes at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Northern Administrative Okrug's Internal Affairs Directorate, along with the department's head, were also detained in this case.
The investigation was necessary for the BSTM to create attractive statistics and was marred by a huge number of violations and falsifications. They also oversaw the hearings. The appeal against the sentence will be heard by the Moscow City Court in the coming days.
In Moscow, law enforcement officers, wanting to increase their crime detection statistics, decided to break the law themselves and committed a crime that they are actively concealing. Previously, the VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info covered part of this story, but the situation is beginning to spiral out of control and is gaining momentum. By a lucky chance, the investigator investigating the criminal case against Andrey Vladimirovich Lamukhin (L.A.V.), a former police officer of the South-Western Administrative District Department of Internal Affairs, discovered falsification of the criminal case materials, but instead of pursuing a legal decision, he took a different approach...
In March 2025, the Savelovsky District Court of Moscow, represented by Judge O.P. Karamysheva, sentenced A.V. Lamukhin to seven years. According to the criminal case file, I.F. Kerimov, a senior detective with the 11th Department of the BSTM of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Moscow, also served as the senior detective. A former detective with the BSTM from May 22, 2023, and a former detective with the South-Western Administrative District Department of Internal Affairs, he began investigating a group of unidentified individuals (still unidentified) using the Telegram messenger, username "davnovteme," offering to hack internet users' email accounts starting August 14, 2023. Specifically, they were providing logins and passwords for duplicate accounts for 120,000 rubles. The advertisement itself is not included in the case file. Part of the funds for the "purchase" was allocated by officers of the Federal Security Service of Russia for Moscow and the Moscow Region, who oversaw the operation. According to the report, the operation began on August 31, 2023, with the initiation of correspondence with the user "davnovteme." Having agreed on the terms and conditions, operative Kerimov transferred 132,000 rubles from his account to the card of an unidentified person, and 12,000 rubles went to the account of an unidentified person who acted as the guarantor of the transaction.
On October 5, 2023, Kerimov received a login and password from "davnovteme" for the email address [email protected], provided by Kerimov's "friend"—a certain G.E.E., who voluntarily consented to participate in the test purchase (TPP) and confirmed that the email belonged to him. The login and password were for the duplicate email address [email protected].
On October 12, 2023, according to the information reconciliation report, Kerimov invited his friend G.E.E. to the Bureau of the Specialized Trademarks and Trade of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Moscow, located at the following address: Moscow, ul. Myasnitskaya, 49/22, building 1, where, in office #214, they allegedly compared the email addresses of [email protected] and [email protected]. Specifically, by visually inspecting the incoming and outgoing folders of both email accounts, they confirmed their identity. Kerimov thereby documented unauthorized access to the computer information of G.E.E.'s email account. After "comparing" the information, G.E.E. gave an explanation, which he confirmed during questioning, and stated that his constitutional rights had been violated.
These documents, along with a number of related documents (the money disbursement certificate, the Telegram user inspection report, G.E.E.'s consent to participate in the operational search activities, the instruction report on preventing provocation, and the order for the operational search activities), served as evidence for investigator E.A. Yelfimova of the Savelovsky District Investigative Committee. The reason for initiating a criminal case on December 11, 2023, against unidentified persons under Article 138, Part 4 of Article 272, and Part 4 of Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
As part of the investigation, a request was made to Mail.RU (OOO VK), and it was established that between August 31, 2023, and October 5, 2023, requests and orders from the Moscow City Court were sent to Mail.RU (VK) on behalf of the South-Western Administrative Okrug Department of Internal Affairs, which were allegedly provided by L.A.V. The orders were forged and authorized the conduct of operational search activities to remove information.
Information from technical communication channels was sent to various email accounts. The investigation did not establish who received the information or the nature of the information received. No one was bothered by the fact that L.A.V. began submitting documents to Mail.RU (VK) from August 31, 2023, to October 5, 2023, that is, during the same period as Kerimov's operational search operations. Prior to this, L.A.V. had not been involved in any "dirty" stories and came to the attention of law enforcement officials two and a half years after leaving the same South-Western Administrative Okrug Department of Internal Affairs, where he served until May 2021.
On December 18, 2023, L.A.V. was detained at Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg by officers from the BSTM of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Moscow and officers from the Internal Security Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for St. Petersburg and the Leninsky Region. Presenting him with a search warrant for an address where LAV had never lived, the officers went to conduct the search. After the search was complete and nothing was found, they asked LAV to voluntarily hand over the communications equipment he had on him. Kerimov confiscated it and entered it into the search report, thereby legitimizing the search of a residence to which L.A.V. had no connection. Following the search, Kerimov informed L.A.V. of the need to accompany him to Moscow for questioning by the investigator as a witness. To support his words, he presented an order from the investigator and a summons order, which L.A.V. signed. Having purchased tickets for L.A.V., Kerimov and other BSTM officers departed for Moscow (the order from the investigator, as well as the summons order, later disappeared from the case file). On December 19, 2023, after being questioned by investigator Epifanova as a witness, L.A.V. was released.
On December 20, 2023, while L.A.V. was traveling from Moscow toward St. Petersburg, he was detained in the Tver region by traffic police officers, handcuffed, and taken to the nearest police station. They informed him that he was under arrest (as required by law, he was not listed in the book of those taken).
After approximately seven hours of handcuffing, Kerimov and his colleagues from the BSTM arrived to pick up L.A.V., removing a GPS tracker from L.A.V.'s bag, which Kerimov had placed there beforehand, waiting for the right moment. They took L.A.V. to the investigator in Moscow. In Moscow, Elfimova detained L.A.V. under Article 91 of the Criminal Procedure Code and sent him to a temporary detention facility. On December 21, 2023, Elfimova filed a motion with the court for L.A.V.'s arrest, along with Kerimov's report stating that L.A.V. had allegedly escaped from the investigative department and that Kerimov had found him in the Tver region during an operational search operation (this report also disappeared from the criminal case file).
On December 22, 2023, investigator Elfimova sent a request to Mail.RU (VK) seeking information about the owners of the email accounts listed in the forged documents, specifically all available personal information (full name, date of birth, contact number, etc.). The request also included the email address [email protected], belonging to G.E.E., who participated in the operational search activities during a test purchase, which allegedly included information collation on October 12, 2023. Based on this, an information collation report was drawn up and a criminal case was opened.
No earlier than January 2024, investigator Elfimova received a response from Mail.RU (VK) with the requested information and discovered that the last authorization for the [email protected] email address (i.e., the last time the email was accessed and its contents were verified), which was confirmed by O. Bardnikova, Director of Security at Mail (VK), during the court hearing, was on April 8, 2023, at 10:48:46 AM, with IP address 78.107.20.49. This fact indicates that on October 12, 2023, Kerimov and G.E.E. Nothing was compared, and what exactly Kerimov purchased from "davnovteme" is unknown. This fact also indicates that the information reconciliation report of October 12, 2023, was falsified, and the testimony of Kerimov and G.E.E. was false.
The fact of falsification did not bother investigator Elfimova, and based on the case opened for Kerimov's test purchase, without evidence confirming L.A.V.'s receipt of any information, based on the fact that he submitted requests to Mail (VK) and the email addresses specified in the requests, which were 29 along with G.E.E.'s email, he is charged with 29 counts under Article 138 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, without statements from "victims," although this is a mandatory requirement of the Criminal Procedure Code, and 29 counts under Part 4 of Article She justified the severity of the crimes under Article 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation by citing violations of constitutional human rights (otherwise, the actions would constitute a minor crime) and four counts under Part 4 of Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
While L.A.V. was reviewing the criminal case materials, he pointed out the falsification to investigator Yelfimova, but instead of responding to the falsification and initiating a case against Kerimov and G.E.E., she began threatening L.A.V. with criminal prosecution for a more serious crime under Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
At the time of the transfer of the operational-search activity materials to the investigative body, the materials contained a disk with the operational-search activity recording, which no one examined before the initiation of the criminal case, but during the investigation the disk was replaced with another one with a different identification number, and where the disk with the original information went is of no interest to anyone (not even the judge) except L.A.V.
No one is even asking why not a single member of the public was present during the operational search.
L.A.V. is accused of obtaining logins and passwords from citizens' email accounts (specifically, of seizing this information), but the case file contains no logins or passwords for email accounts, nor is there any information indicating that L.A.V. carried out the seizure. A seizure is documented by a corresponding protocol, and any organization that carries out a seizure retains a copy of the protocol indicating when, where, and what was seized. There are no such protocols in the case file, nor are there any responses from Mail.RU (VK) to the South-Western Administrative Okrug Department of Internal Affairs, despite Mail.RU (VK) registering all its responses and each response having its own outgoing registration number.
The case file contains no evidence of copying computer information protected by law, which is a mandatory element of a crime (copying is defined as the transfer of information in the form of electrical signals to another physical medium). In an effort to make things as difficult as possible for L.A.V., who had uncovered the falsification of evidence, the investigator justified the copying of the mailbox contents by citing the transfer of unknown logins and passwords to unidentified accomplices.
It turns out that all 28 additional incidents stem from a single falsified test purchase, and these incidents were proudly identified by the BSTM and the FSB.
If the test purchase via email to G.E.E. ([email protected]), where no one compared anything, is deemed falsified, then the 28 incidents will collapse like a house of cards, as there is no evidence that L.A.V. received any information. Even if LAV had brought forged documents to Mail.RU (VK), without receiving the information and using it, it wouldn't constitute a crime. Naturally, no one cares about that outcome, since the heads of the operational units have already reported to management on the dismantling of the hacker organized crime group. The unit has 29 records of solving serious crimes within the organized crime group (the detection of such crimes is a rating), and the statistics are available, meaning a bonus will be awarded by the New Year. However, the operatives concealed the fact that there was no organized crime group, and in order to produce a "fat" result, Kerimov falsified the operational search materials. No one tried to catch "their" colleagues from the South-Western Administrative Okrug Department of Internal Affairs, who sent LAV to obtain information using the forged documents, and over the seven years that LAV spent... The Savelovsky Court "formed" him; not only might he forget those who gave him the documents and used them "blindly," but he might not even be released at all...
As a former detective, L.A.V. uncovered not only instances of falsification but also Kerimov's violation of confidentiality, namely, his use of a personal Apple laptop and internet access to search a Telegram user in a restricted (secret) office of the BSTM of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Moscow. Kerimov drew up a report on the Telegram user's search (it's possible he also uses this laptop to type documents marked "C," which is unacceptable). No one paid attention to the receipt of funds, which Kerimov used to receive funds for an entirely different purpose, namely, the purchase of a tracking device. Since 2024, L.A.V. has been in the criminal justice system. From the pretrial detention center, he writes statements to the FSB, Investigative Committee, and Ministry of Internal Affairs prosecutor's office, attaching copies of documents from the criminal case proving falsification, and requests that Kerimov, G.E.E., and Elfimova be held accountable. However, thanks to the people overseeing this effort, not a single statement was processed, and L.A.V. didn't even receive formal replies. Apparently, to achieve good results in solving crimes, even falsified and unproven ones, official crimes can be overlooked; statistics are more important!
During the investigation, L.A.V. gave detailed testimony about the person from the South-Western Administrative District Department of Internal Affairs who gave him the forged documents and on whose instructions he delivered the documents to other organizations (Yandex, Sber, VTB, Alfa Bank, and others). Investigator Elfimova showed a photo of the police officer, taken from the personnel file in the South-Western Administrative District Department of Internal Affairs, and L.A.V. confirmed that he was the one who had handed over the documents. Investigator Elfimova said she would report this to a certain general and decided not to conduct a formal identification.
A Mail.RU (VK) employee, Mail (VK) Security Director O. Bardnikova, was summoned to court. She confirmed that, based on a January 2024 response from Mail (VK) to the Savelovsky Investigative Committee, G.E.E.'s last login to his email address ([email protected]) was April 8, 2023. She stated that Mail.RU (VK) does not provide duplicate email accounts for citizens, nor does it provide logins and passwords for them, which contradicted the very essence of the criminal case and undermined the prosecution's case. However, Judge O.P. Karamysheva ruled otherwise. She decided not to trust the employee of the Mail.RU (VK) company, where all the events unfolded, but trusted the forger Kerimov and his "friend" G.E.E.
As part of the investigation, investigator Elfimova issued a ruling to seize the accounting and document registration logs from the Mail.RU (VK) company, but then M decided not to conduct a search, apparently to prevent the investigation from backfiring.
Thus, a very unflattering picture emerges: BSTM operative Kerimov, knowing full well from his unscrupulous colleagues that activist L.A.V. would unknowingly bring forged documents to Mail.RU (VK) to obtain sensitive information, conducts an operational operation, falsifies evidence, and reports solving serious crimes, while the valiant Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor's Office, and the court cover for him in this case, without even attempting to understand the situation.
After L.A.V.'s sentence was handed down (since March 2025), instead of giving him the opportunity to review the court records and prepare and file an appeal, he was sent on a trip across Russia, where they will apparently "help" him forget the truth and exert the "desired" influence on him. This story naturally raises the question: why are judges acting illegally? The answer is obvious: if there is a "supervisor" in a case who has a vested interest in the matter, the judges will weigh the "supervisor's" wishes, since it is the "supervisor" who appoints (approves) a judge to a position and promotes them. Will "supervisors" be able to influence judges of the Moscow City Court in appeals? We'll soon find out...
Timofey Grishin
To be continued
