In Chuvashia, a court convicted two “black diggers.” What's wrong with this story and where did the jar of coins come from?

Good mood to you, dear readers of our blog. Do you want to hear the story about how not just a fan of instrument search, but also a YouTuber, and also a pensioner, a former employee of the Criminal Investigation Department, was put on trial and received a criminal sentence. An unimaginable story that is difficult to imagine even as a script for an atypical tragicomedy. But we'll try.

Scene one. “Cop Loves Silence”

He lives well, somewhere in Chuvashia, citizen Vasilyev S.A. (Hereinafter the data is from the court verdict, so there will be a lot of formalism) We don’t know how many years he has been interested in instrument search, but, a couple of years ago, his activities, according to digging up all sorts of antiquities, the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Chuvash Republic noticed.

And, here, of course, it would be a completely sensible question to ask. “Why exactly him???” Indeed, I am convinced that even today in Chuvashia one can easily count several hundred, or even thousands, of active lovers of instrument search. And why the choice fell on citizen Vasilyev is unclear. Let's just assume that his karma is bad and his chakras are full of holes, or his horoscope is wrong.

This is how an instrument search enthusiast from Chuvashia ended up in operational development. And then I want to introduce you to excerpts from the court ruling. I will publish a link to the resolution itself at the end.

Quote from the court ruling: “The judge’s resolution dated DD.MM.YYYY No. allowed operational search activities against S.A. Vasilyev related to wiretapping telephone conversations and removing information from technical communication channels

During the seizure of DD.MM.YYYY, a CD containing information from technical channels about all postal electronic sendings and connections on the social network “VKontakte” using the user’s email address”

Scene two “Detention and Confession”

And, as we understand, speaking in the jargon of crime series, Vasilyev was “led.” It is unknown how long the surveillance lasted, but citizen Vasilyev was detained in a field with a metal detector in his hands, a piece of wire, a piece of a spoon and two 19th-century coins in his pocket.

As one would expect, citizen Vasiliev immediately and factually decided to cooperate with the investigation, and began to give confessions with might and main. Yes, I was digging! Yes, I did! Yes, that’s right, he was destroying the cultural layer. And, this case would have remained typical and unremarkable against the background of similar criminal cases under Article 243.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation if not for one thing.

Together with Vasiliev S.A. operational officers detained the second digger I.B. Garin at the scene. And then it suddenly turned out that citizen Garin I.B. is a former employee of the Criminal Investigation Department and is now retired. Now, this is a turn of events!!! Probably, perhaps the colleagues would have been able to come to an agreement on the spot, but, as I said, Vasiliev apparently had something on his side that made it impossible to reach an agreement. Or the karma is really bad.

A small nuance. When detaining the diggers, the operatives laid them on the ground and only then realized that they only had one handcuff for two detainees. Therefore, the second detainee was “packed” with his own trouser belt.

We must give Garin his due; during the investigative actions at the place of detention, he behaved correctly. He refused to testify, citing Article 51 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. During the search, no coins or other cop items were found on him. Subsequently, he told the investigator that he was on that field solely for the company of Vasiliev and in order to make another video for his YouTube channel. And the metal detector he had with him was not working at all, which made it impossible to search for relics with it.

Scene three “Box”

The operatives tied up the diggers, one of them went to the nearest village and brought two witnesses. In the presence of witnesses, they conducted searches and described what was seized. A piece of wire, a broken spoon and two 19th century copper coins, metal detectors and more. The witnesses were released, and an hour later an investigator arrived at the scene. And, it had to happen that under the detainees’ car he found a certain white jar with several coins. Well, something strange happened in this episode. At the trial, the investigator stated that the defendants verbally admitted on the spot that this was their box, which made there was no point in rewriting the protocol, much less taking fingerprints from the box itself. The defendants unanimously assured that they did not know the origin of the box. When the investigator arrived at the place of detention, he showed them a certain jar and asked, “Whose is this?” The defendants replied that they did not know, and that was all. However, this fact did not bother the judge in any way and he did not exclude the jar itself and the coins from the total evidence.

Scene four “Long live our court, the most humane court in the world”

The trial itself was long and replete with a lot of interesting details. I will review the trial in a separate post. But here and now I simply cannot resist quoting a little from the speech at the trial by an employee of the Ministry of Culture of the Chuvash Republic.

Quote: “Therefore, all countries at the state level protect their archaeological heritage. Archaeological sites are very important for studying the past of our region and the country as a whole, especially those chronological periods about which written sources have not survived.”

As a result: The defendants were found guilty. Vasiliev received a year of probation. Garin also received a suspended sentence of one and a half years, with confiscation of metal detectors.

For anyone interested in analyzing all the material on their own, I provide a link to the original source. Website of the Vurnarsky District Court of the Chuvash Republic – Chuvashia!

Thank you for your attention, if you are interested in a more detailed analysis of this criminal case, subscribe to our channel and follow the publications. I will definitely make another note in the near future.