Prisoners of penitentiary No. 15 forced to support financially criminal organization

A number of convicts of the closed-type penitentiary No. 15 located in Cricova town were compelled to pay money into a fund created to support the activity of a criminal group headed by a thief in law. According to prosecutors, if the prisoners or their relatives refused to pay money, the detainees were threatened, blackmailed and beaten, Info-Prim Neo reports. “A group of detainees with self-proclaimed hierarchical positions in the underground world, as well as their assistants, by threats, blackmail and physical abuse, forced the prisoners and their relatives to transmit money that was used for financing the activity of criminal organizations,” the prosecutor of Chisinau’s Rascani district Igor Popa told a news conference on December 17. He said that the suspects extorted money in different ways. One of the most spread methods was making the convicts to take part in games of chance, where there were artificially created so-called debts and the prisoners had to transfer money to offenders’ accounts in order to repay them. The sums varied, but there were cases when the detainees yielded up their apartments. Allegedly, the scheme had been applied since 2011 until November 2012. The prosecutors do not exclude that similar groups exist in all the penitentiaries of the country. It’s not yet known if prison employees had been also involved. Igor Popa did not provide more details about the identified criminal group and the thief in law that managed it. The suspects face 8 to 15 years behind bars in addition to the time they are serving now.