Two Dagestani residents are under investigation for selling MAX accounts.
A criminal case under a new article on the illegal transfer of phone numbers and social media accounts has been opened against two residents of Dagestan. The suspects operated a SIM card farm to sell access to the state-run MAX messenger, investigators claimed.
"Caucasian Knot" reported that, amid problems with banking services due to mobile internet restrictions, residents of the North Caucasus Federal District have expressed skepticism about the state-run MAX messenger.
According to investigators, two Dagestan residents illegally acquired more than 400 subscriber numbers, which they used to mass-create accounts on the MAX messenger and the VKontakte social network. They then sold them to third parties through Telegram for a reward in the form of cryptocurrency worth more than $600.
Criminal cases have been opened under the article on organizing the activity of transferring information necessary for the registration and authorization of an Internet user to gain access to the functionality of the information resource , Gayana Garieva, press secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Republic, reported on the Telegram channel.
In July 2025, the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was supplemented with Articles 274.4 (organization of activities for the transfer of subscriber numbers in violation of the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation) and 274.5 (organization of activities for the transfer of information necessary for registration and (or) authorization of an internet user to access the functionality of an information resource). Such crimes are punishable by a fine of up to 700,000 rubles or up to two years' salary, with disqualification from holding certain positions and engaging in certain activities for up to two years, or by forced labor for up to three years, or by imprisonment for the same term. Participation in the transfer of account numbers and login information will be punishable by a fine of up to 300,000 rubles or up to one year's salary, or by forced labor for up to two years, or by imprisonment for the same term, TASS reported.
At the end of January, the Trusovsky District Court of Astrakhan received a criminal case against a minor from Astrakhan accused of transferring data for registration or authorization on social networks (Part 1 of Article 274.5 of the Criminal Code). The court's press service reported on its VKontakte page that the minimum age for this crime is 16. This was the first criminal case under this article to be heard by the court. The Ministry of Internal Affairs reported the teenager's arrest in November 2025. An 18-year-old resident of the Luhansk region was also detained and charged with the same offense. At the time, security forces shut down "two Telegram channels that allowed scammers to use over 1,000 rented messaging accounts daily to defraud Russian citizens," the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement on its Telegram channel.