A court has recognized the evidence gathered by the Orenburg Office of the Investigative Committee sufficient to pass a guilty verdict over members of an organized group of “black” realtors from the town of Orsk – a 50-year-old organizer and his 5 accomplices charged with 15 counts of crimes under Parts 3 and 4 of Article 159 of the RF Penal Code (fraud committed by an organized group on a large and very scale related to depriving a citizen their rights on house) committed in the towns of Orsk and Novotroitsk. IN addition, three of the accomplices are also charged with killing 5 people (Part 2, items “a”, “g” and “j” of Article 105 of the RF Penal Code).

The Court and investigators have revealed that the crimes were committed by the accused in the period between 2009 and 2011 out of mercenary motives. Moreover, the accused who worked as police officers in the town of Orsk and in the territorial office of the Federal Registration Service used their authority to commit the crimes.

As a rule the crimes were committed against citizens who lived alone and abused alcohol. The accomplices killed the owners of flats with special medicines which was undetectable in the body after the autopsy. This way they made their deaths look like of natural causes (hear failure, alcohol poisoning and others).

It took the jury more than 10 months to review the case. The accused did not admit their guilt and insisted that someone else was guilty.

The jury found the accused guilty and not recommended for mercy. Soon the court will start discussing the verdict and final qualification of the crimes as well as the punishment.

In March 2014, the accomplices also got guilty sentence for 5 counts of similar frauds and the murder of 4 people. Depending on the role each one of them had played in the crimes, the court then sentenced them to between 1.5 and 24 years in prison.