MOSCOW, July 24. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has tracked down and busted a gang of drug producers in the Far Eastern Khabarovsk region, a source in the FSB press service told TASS.
"The illegal activities of a criminal group, which organized a deeply clandestine network to produce and smuggle synthetic drugs in the Khabarovsk Region, have been identified and caught," the source said.
Officers from the regional FSB branch detained four gang members. "Two large laboratories for the production of synthetic drugs were unearthed, about 500 grams of ready-to-use mephedrone were seized, as well as more than ten kilograms of a substance undergoing absorption, over 400 kilograms of precursors and foreign made equipment for producing chemicals on an industrial scale," the FSB reported.
Drugs were smuggled through caches in Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur and their suburbs. Smugglers used cryptocurrencies to add money to credit cards through online currency exchangers. "The criminal scheme set production targets at 15 kilograms of drugs a month, which could sell for over 15 mln rubles ($238,000) at the so-called black market prices," the FSB source added.
Group members used the Telegram and Jabber messaging services to communicate with each other and carry out their schemes.