Dead souls recorded on Pushkin – Newspaper Kommersant No. 40 (7485) dated 03/10/2023

From fraud in the framework of the Pushkin Card program, which allows young people to attend cultural events for free at public expense, bona fide organizers and ticket operators suffer losses, Kommersant found out. Attackers withdraw money by buying tickets for non-existent events, and the operator of the Post-Bank program disconnects small organizers from it to prevent theft, blocking transfers to ticket operators. This has already provoked an increase in lawsuits against the latter.

The head of Rosfinmonitoring, Yuri Chikhanchin, told President Vladimir Putin on March 9 that scammers had managed to steal 100 million rubles. from the cards of the youth state program “Pushkin Card” (its operator is Post-Bank). The attackers have already been found, and the funds have been arrested, the official assured. The Investigative Committee clarified that they are investigating a criminal case of embezzlement.

Pushkin Card is a state program for Russians aged 14–22, launched in August 2021. You can issue it through your account on the State Services, and choose the event you like – for example, on the PRO.Culture.RF portal. From the card, to which the state credits 5 thousand rubles, you can pay for tickets to museums, theaters, exhibitions, philharmonics and concerts. In early February, the number of Pushkin Card holders reached 8 million people.

For the first time, suspicious operations for cashing out funds from Pushkin Cards were revealed last fall, Kommersant sources say in the ticket operator market.

The scheme, according to them, looks like this: the owner of the card, who does not intend to use it for its intended purpose, but wants to withdraw money, can seek help from “cashers” who advertise their services on the Internet and via Telegram.

They offer 4 thousand rubles. in exchange for card data with a face value of 5 thousand rubles.

Fraudsters register a fictitious event on the PRO.Culture.RF portal, for which they sell tickets worth the face value of the Pushkin Card through aggregators. These tickets are bought by those who received card data from real owners. Fraudulent activities can be detected by a ticket operator when analyzing transactions – “for example, reissuing a ticket to the same phone number, buying a large number of tickets from one email or one IP address,” says Kommersant’s interlocutor in the event organization market. The scheme, according to Kommersant’s sources, often involves small regional event organizers who are able to pass the inspection of the Ministry of Culture, “they can have contracts with both the venue and the artists.”

As a result, back in the fall of 2022, Post-Bank began to disconnect small private organizers from the program, funds for tickets hung with operators until the circumstances of suspicious write-offs were clarified, and, among other things, bona fide event organizers stopped receiving part of the funds, Kommersant sources say. “When unscrupulous participants in the Pushkin Card program appear, work is carried out by law enforcement agencies, we work closely with the participants in the process,” the bank said.

The actions of fraudsters have already provoked an increase in the number of litigations between event organizers, ticket operators and the bank. So, at the end of 2022, the organizer Ruslan Zhusalin (IP Zhusalin Ruslan Aitzhanovich) filed a lawsuit against TicketsCloud (Ticket Cloud LLC) and Post Bank (third party) for 11.2 million rubles. TicketsCloud did not fully transfer the funds received from the sale of tickets, it follows from the case file. The court granted the plaintiff’s claim. A similar lawsuit against TicketsCloud was found by Kommersant on the Electronic Justice portal by IP Amshinsky Nikolai Alekseevich (filed on October 18, 2022 for 2.6 million rubles). Third parties are Post-Bank and the Ministry of Culture. The claim has not been published in the filing cabinet, the proceedings have not yet been completed. TicketsCloud and other operators did not comment on the situation.

The identification of such a major fraud may adversely affect the decision to extend the Pushkin Card program, says Efim Kazantsev, a member of the commission for the legal support of the digital economy of the Moscow branch of the Russian Bar Association. “Of course, what happened will also affect the interests of the bank as a program operator,” adds Elena Grin, Ph.D. conscientious event organizers will suffer losses from fraudulent schemes.”

Tatyana Isakova