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Droppers to be qualified as criminals. The bill submitted to the State Duma
The government has submitted a bill on criminal liability for droppers to the State Duma of the Russian Federation.
Droppers are accomplices of social engineers and other fraudsters who offer criminals their bank card details for transfers of illegal funds to be further withdrawn in cash or transferred to other accounts. Droppers also include unscrupulous clients who receive their bank cards, access to online/mobile banking services and then sell them to fraudsters.
The bill has been published in the database of the lower house of parliament. It amends Article 187 of the Criminal Code (“Illegal circulation of payment instruments”).
Thus, penalties of up to 300 thousand rubles or imprisonment for up to three years are proposed for persons who provide, out of greed, access to their accounts to third parties for illegal use. The same penalties and imprisonment are proposed for those using their accounts in illegal transactions as directed by third parties.
A penalty of up to 1 million rubles and imprisonment for up to six years is proposed for providing access to the account by a non-owner for the purpose of illegal transactions.
According to the explanatory note to the bill, about 485 and 470 thousand crimes involving droppers were committed in 2024 and 2023, respectively. The volume of closed and suspended “remote theft” criminal cases in 2024 amounted to 197.5 billion rubles. In Russia, there is a de facto grey market for bank cards, which allows fraudsters to withdraw stolen funds.