March 16, 2020

Crime Pays


Crime Pays
Cozy. Stanislav Kozlovskiy, Wikimedia Commons

There's money to be made in the Russian prison system.

Danielle "Corleone" Bondarenko is under investigation by Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs for more than a dozen counts of extortion of prisoners. She had accumulated about 2 million euros through a racket set up by her husband. 

According to goofily-named Russian news outlet "Prime Crime" (Прайм Крайм), Bondarenko's husband, a Tbilisi native named Rezo Kakhmazov, currently imprisoned near Moscow, would charge his fellow prisoners cash in return for pulling strings such as transfers to nicer prisons. The money would then be transferred to his wife's credit card.

What surprises us most about this story is not so much the 2-million-euro tab, but that there apparently exist "nicer" Russian prisons.

 

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