Embezzlement of Non-Cash Money: New Benchmarks for the Law Enforcer in the Determination of the Crime Place and Time

Abstract

The practical relevance of the norms providing for liability for theft from a bank account revealed the lack of uniformity in the qualification of objectively similar acts, determining the adoption in 2021 by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of acts that guide the law enforcement officer on the issues of distinguishing between related compositions and determining the place of theft of electronic money, linking it with the location of the credit institution servicing the victim’s card. The implementation of the new approach led to a bias in the workload of law enforcement agencies, determining a change in the position of the Plenum in 2022, which “transferred” the place of the theft to the place of “withdrawal of funds”, and the place of fraud to the “place of action by the person”. The new benchmarks make it possible to decentralize remote theft from credit institutions, solving organizational issues, but may destabilize the practice of determining the moment when the types of theft in question end and pose a threat of infringement on the rights of victims.