Documents of a handwriting examination of notes found on the computer of the head of the investigative department of the committee for the Tverskoy district of Moscow, Marat Tambiev, have been published online. Lawyer Vadim Bagaturia drew attention to this in his Telegram channel.
Having studied the case materials, he found numerous inconsistencies in the documents.
Bagaturia said that on the computer confiscated from Tambiev, the investigators found a note called “Pension”, which contained a photograph of a piece of paper with a handwritten seed phrase from a certain wallet.
“Tambiev did not find the cryptocurrency itself and not a wallet with it! We found a certain photograph with a certain manuscript. [На основании этого] The Prosecutor General’s Office is building a position on the ownership of 1032 BTC by Marat Tambiev,” the lawyer wrote.
According to him, since witnesses were not required to participate in the examination of the hard drive, the investigator attached a photo table and screenshots of the process to the examination. However, they turned out to be “absolutely unreadable due to the scale of a third of an A4 sheet.” Also, it is impossible to see the path to the very note “Pension” on them.
“The defendant’s representative asked the plaintiff to submit readable documents, to which he received the same ones, but printed in high contrast mode,” Bagaturia said.
The second argument of the Prosecutor General’s Office is that the note with the seed phrase was written personally by Tambiev. At the same time, according to the lawyer, during the handwriting examination, the specialist was presented with samples of Tambiev’s handwriting from his old manuscripts, which were also written in Cyrillic.
Also, the conclusion of the forensic center lacks the usual photo tables with a step-by-step visual comparison of handwriting samples and objects of study.
Bagaturia said that the descriptive part of the conclusion of the handwriting expert was made “as if by eye” and does not inspire confidence in the conclusions of the examination.
“Any photograph has distortion depending on the focal length of the lens, the lighting and the shooting angle. And what if this is generally the notorious photoshop, because the original note does not exist, ”he added.
Cryplogger editors checked wallets, whose seed phrases are presented in the case. One of them received incoming transactions totaling 100 BTC in March 2022.
Second received 932.1 BTC in the same month. On November 17, 2022, on the day Tambiev’s bitcoins were seized by the Basmanny Court of Moscow, the bulk of the funds from him went to new intermediate address.
Then, on the same day, the combined balance of the two addresses — 1,032.1 BTC ($26.8 million at the time of writing) — was withdrawn to a separate owned by investigators walletwhere they are still.
Recall that Marat Tambiev is accused of receiving a bribe in April 2022 from members of the hacker group Infraud Organization Mark and Konstantin Bergmanov, as well as Kirill Samokutyaevsky for not seizing their assets.
According to media reports, at the time of the arrest, the hackers provided access to ten crypto wallets, which in December 2021 received proceeds from their activities in the amount of 2064 BTC. Subsequently, all assets were withdrawn from wallets.
The investigation suggests that half of the amount went to Tambiev’s wallets. The rest of the bitcoins, according to unnamed media sources, went to some kind of “cold wallet”, access to which can be accessed by employees of the “K” Department who took part in the searches.
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Cryplogger Newsletters: Keep your finger on the pulse of the bitcoin industry!
Documents of a handwriting examination of notes found on the computer of the head of the investigative department of the committee for the Tverskoy district of Moscow, Marat Tambiev, have been published online. Lawyer Vadim Bagaturia drew attention to this in his Telegram channel.
Having studied the case materials, he found numerous inconsistencies in the documents.
Bagaturia said that on the computer confiscated from Tambiev, the investigators found a note called “Pension”, which contained a photograph of a piece of paper with a handwritten seed phrase from a certain wallet.
“Tambiev did not find the cryptocurrency itself and not a wallet with it! We found a certain photograph with a certain manuscript. [На основании этого] The Prosecutor General’s Office is building a position on the ownership of 1032 BTC by Marat Tambiev,” the lawyer wrote.
According to him, since witnesses were not required to participate in the examination of the hard drive, the investigator attached a photo table and screenshots of the process to the examination. However, they turned out to be “absolutely unreadable due to the scale of a third of an A4 sheet.” Also, it is impossible to see the path to the very note “Pension” on them.
“The defendant’s representative asked the plaintiff to submit readable documents, to which he received the same ones, but printed in high contrast mode,” Bagaturia said.
The second argument of the Prosecutor General’s Office is that the note with the seed phrase was written personally by Tambiev. At the same time, according to the lawyer, during the handwriting examination, the specialist was presented with samples of Tambiev’s handwriting from his old manuscripts, which were also written in Cyrillic.
Also, the conclusion of the forensic center lacks the usual photo tables with a step-by-step visual comparison of handwriting samples and objects of study.
Bagaturia said that the descriptive part of the conclusion of the handwriting expert was made “as if by eye” and does not inspire confidence in the conclusions of the examination.
“Any photograph has distortion depending on the focal length of the lens, the lighting and the shooting angle. And what if this is generally the notorious photoshop, because the original note does not exist, ”he added.
Cryplogger editors checked wallets, whose seed phrases are presented in the case. One of them received incoming transactions totaling 100 BTC in March 2022.
Second received 932.1 BTC in the same month. On November 17, 2022, on the day Tambiev’s bitcoins were seized by the Basmanny Court of Moscow, the bulk of the funds from him went to new intermediate address.
Then, on the same day, the combined balance of the two addresses — 1,032.1 BTC ($26.8 million at the time of writing) — was withdrawn to a separate owned by investigators walletwhere they are still.
Recall that Marat Tambiev is accused of receiving a bribe in April 2022 from members of the hacker group Infraud Organization Mark and Konstantin Bergmanov, as well as Kirill Samokutyaevsky for not seizing their assets.
According to media reports, at the time of the arrest, the hackers provided access to ten crypto wallets, which in December 2021 received proceeds from their activities in the amount of 2064 BTC. Subsequently, all assets were withdrawn from wallets.
The investigation suggests that half of the amount went to Tambiev’s wallets. The rest of the bitcoins, according to unnamed media sources, went to some kind of “cold wallet”, access to which can be accessed by employees of the “K” Department who took part in the searches.
Found a mistake in the text? Select it and press CTRL+ENTER
Cryplogger Newsletters: Keep your finger on the pulse of the bitcoin industry!