Gang of Tolstopyatov brothers

The organizer and leader of the gang - Vyacheslav Pavlovich Tolstopyatov, the youngest of two Tolstopyatov brothers, was born in 1940 in one of the villages in the vicinity of Bryansk .

From childhood, he was fond of designing, drawing and drawing. Vyacheslav especially liked to sketch. He could spend hours poring over a book, redrawing the illustration, and achieving absolute similarity - down to the smallest detail. At about the age of fifteen, Vyacheslav adapted himself to draw banknotes. He painted 50 and 100 ruble banknotes (this was before the monetary reform in the USSR in 1961 ).

At first Slava exchanged them in liquor stores. I threw the purchased bottle into the bushes (Vyacheslav almost never drank alcohol), and spent real money on sweets, books, tools. Over time, he adapted to sell the drawn money to taxi drivers: he drove a short distance by car, held out a folded bill to the driver (it should be noted that the "pre-reform" post-war banknotes were much larger than the current ones), took change and disappeared.

Seeing that taxi drivers never open bills, Vyacheslav became bolder to such an extent that he began to draw money from only one side. This ruined him. On February 23, 1960, a taxi driver by the name of Metelitsa, giving Vyacheslav a ride to the Prigorodny railway station, nevertheless unfolded the bill he had been offered - and froze when he saw a blank sheet of paper from the back.

“Vyacheslav admitted everything at once,” said A. Granovsky, investigator in the first case of Tolstopyatov. - In an investigative experiment, using only colored pencils, watercolors, BF-2 glue, compasses, a ruler and a blade, Vyacheslav in four hours (!) Drew an absolutely exact copy of a 100-ruble note. We all gasped. Even in the police, even while under investigation, Vyacheslav won universal sympathy with his politeness, modesty, and well-read. Chatting with him was a pleasure. "I asked the court to commute the sentence - given the young age, complete repentance, the assistance provided to the investigation."

Currency counterfeiting is a serious crime against the state, but the verdict was unusually lenient; four years in a penal colony. In prison, Tolstopyatov met Sergey Samasyuk and a gang plan appeared. Upon his release, Tolstopyatov Jr. enlisted the support of his older brother Vladimir, who allocated him a room adapted for the headquarters and workshop of the gang. The fourth member of the gang was the old friend of the brothers Vladimir Gorshkov.

All weapons of the gang were made by the Tolstopyatov brothers themselves in semi-industrial conditions: the blanks were made in an underground workshop, the secret entrance to which was hidden using a specially turning mirror, and the curly parts were ordered by familiar factory milling machines under the guise of spare parts for household appliances. In total, four small-caliber seven-shot revolvers, three small-caliber folding submachine guns of a unique design, hand grenades and even improvised body armor were made.

The Tolstopyatovs developed and worked out the tactics of capturing other people's cars with taking the driver hostage, since the use of personal vehicles was actually an impossible and unnecessary task, since a personal vehicle in those conditions would instantly unmask and expose the group.

Information about the alleged attempt to assemble a helicopter for air raids is most likely to be classified as urban legends, but such a legend best describes the degree of technical ambitions of gang fighters.

In general, it should be recognized that gang tactics were at that time advanced for the criminal world of the USSR, and the degree of their development inevitably provokes a comparison with the actions of Chicago gangsters, city partisans and special services (many Rostovites suspected the gang of working with Western intelligence services). This tactic included “correct” bank robbery, hostage-taking, monitoring and collecting information after the rally, avoiding the chase, conspiracy, preparing an alibi, retraining, conspiracy treatment and disguise. For personal disguise, gang members used black stockings, and therefore received the nickname " Fantomas ."

The bandits developed two main options for the robbery tactics ^[1] :

• One of the bandits stops a car in the city asking for a ride. In the place named by him, under the guise of his friends, the rest of the gang members are waiting. After they get into the car, the driver is tied up, placed in the back seat or in the trunk. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov sits behind the wheel and drives the car to the scene of the attack. The attack is carried out directly by Samasyuk and Gorshkov. After seizing money at high speed, they leave the scene of the crime; they throw the car with the driver in an inconspicuous place.
• Directly at the site of the attack, a car of cash collectors or a cashier is captured. The attack is carried out all together and hiding on the same machine.

The duties of Vladimir Tolstopyatov included monitoring the situation after the crime, the actions of the police, and the stories of witnesses.

The gang attempted to commit its first attack on October 7, 1968. On this day, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov seized a car belonging to the Rostov watch factory in order to rob the cashier at the building of the regional office of the USSR State Bank on the corner of Engels Street (now Bolshaya Sadovaya) and Sokolov Avenue . The attack was preceded by lengthy preparations: the bandits monitored the process of receiving money by cashiers, and established on what days and hours the most intensive money is given out. However, the driver D. Arutyunov, at the sight of a pistol, sharply pressed the brake and jumped out of the car. Then the bandits decided not to attack on that day, realizing that he would report the seizure to the police. The car was abandoned in the courtyard of the House of Actors . In order not to make this matter unnecessary, Vyacheslav himself called the police from a pay phone and said where the car was, adding that he and his friends decided to play the driver, but he did not understand the joke and was frightened by the water pistol.

Three days later, an attempt was made to attack the cashier of the Rostov shoe factory in the car of accomplice Tolstopyatovs Srybny. So that Srybny would not be suspected of complicity, his hands were tied up first. But here the Fantomas were unlucky: at first they did not have time to attack the cashier before getting into the car, and then this car suddenly, in violation of traffic rules, turned into the factory gates.

On October 22, 1968, bandits broke into store No. 46 in the village of Mirny. Opening random shooting, they headed for the box office. But the cashiers managed to hide the bulk of the money, the extraction that day amounted to only 526 rubles. The pensioner who turned out to be nearby, World War II veteran G.S. Chumakov, tried to detain the raiders, but was killed by a machine gun in the back Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov.

On November 25, 1968, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov, having stolen a car that belonged to the Rostov Radio Engineering School, twisted the driver and drove to the October branch of the State Bank. As soon as a woman with a bag appeared out of the door, Samasyuk ran up to her with a machine gun, shot into the air and tore the bag from the woman. In the bag was 2700 rubles.

On December 29, 1968, a gang of Tolstopyatovs attacked a grocery store on Mechnikov Street; production amounted to 1498 rubles.

During the attack on the October Revolution Chemical Plant, the Tolstopyatov gang failed, although it prepared it scrupulously: Vyacheslav himself came to the plant, tried to get a job, read the ads on the stands, found out the days when wages were brought, examined the cashier, watched the car, bringing money from the bank. Nevertheless, the attack failed: the cashier did not carry the bag of money, but the guard. Shots to the ground did not help either. A guard with a bag ran inside the factory, then pulled out his gun and directed it towards the attackers. Shots rang out. The Tolstopyatov’s gang had to blow their legs, they rushed to their car, and shots rang out from behind, one bullet hit Gorshkov in the back. On a truck captured along the way, they barely escaped from the chase.

Realizing that a raid had begun on them in the city, the bandits decided to lie low. The break lasted for a year and a half. During this period, the gang did not take any active actions. Gorshkov healed his back, and Samasyuk at that time for some insignificant crime was sent "for the barbed wire."

In August 1971, the Tolstopyatov gang gathered together and on August 25 launched an attack on the construction organization "UNR-112"; production amounted to 17 thousand rubles.

On December 16, 1971, the brothers and their accomplices attacked the collectors at the savings bank on Pushkinskaya Street; production amounted to 20 thousand rubles. Gorshkov was wounded in the arm.

In total, from October 1968 to June 1973, the "phantoms" made 14 armed attacks, killed two townspeople, and wounded three. The total amount of the loot amounted to about 150 thousand rubles.

To detain the gang, an operational headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was created, numbering over a hundred employees, mobile response teams were deployed, and police vehicles were partially radio-controlled.

The gang ended on June 7, 1973 while trying to rob the box office of the Scientific Research Institute " Yuzhgiprovodkhoz ". The car captured by the gang was stopped after a light collision with a train, a skirmish ensued with police officers. Sergey Samasyuk was killed right on the money bag, the bandit Gorshkov was again shot and injured and was detained along with the rest.

The junior police sergeant A. A. Rusov ^{[2] [3]} and the captain of the fire service V. A. Salyutin ^{[4] [5] were} directly involved in the arrest of the bandits.

On July 1, 1974, the Rostov Regional Court passed a sentence according to which three gang members (Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Vladimir Tolstopyatov, Vladimir Gorshkov) were sentenced to death by shooting, and eight accomplices were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment for aiding or not delivering (Article 77; 175; 196, part 1; 196, part 3 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR ).

All cassation appeals were rejected, and on March 6, 1975 the sentence was carried out.

• The series " Once Upon a Time in Rostov " (24 episodes, 2012, director - Konstantin Khudyakov , producer - Sergey Zhigunov ). In the role of Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov - Vladimir Vdovichenkov .
• Mention of Fantomas can be found in the novels of the modern Russian writer Danil Koretsky , who lives and works in Rostov.
• The Fantomas are also the heroes of the novel Rostov-Papa by the Don writer Anton Gerashchenko .
• “Fantomas” is dedicated to the two-part documentary film “The Threat Against Phantoms” from the series “ Investigators Waged ... ” ^{[6] [7]} .
• A film from the documentary series “Bandits of the Socialist Era” was shot about Fantomas.
• About Fantomas, the film Fantomas vs. MUR was shot from the documentary series Legends of the Soviet Investigation.
• The documentary film “The Phantom Armory” from the series “Secret Signs” on the TV-3 channel.
• It is widely believed that the activities of the Tolstopyatov gang formed the basis of the plot of the feature film " Rooks " (1982). In reality, the Rooks were prototyped by members of another family gang from the Rostov Region - the brothers Peter and Vladimir Bilyk and the husband of their sister Athanasius Stavnichy (in the film, his character bears the name Osadchy) ^[8] .
• Tolstopyatov’s gang is mentioned in the series “Gangster Petersburg” ( part 2 “Lawyer” , series 1), when Evdokia Andreyevna tells Chelishchev about her past life.
• In 2009, the feature film In Paris! where father and son rob shops and collection vehicles. The main characters hid their faces under stockings and used a homemade revolver. The film takes place in 1968. What is noteworthy, the main characters were also given the nickname "phantomomas" by police officers.
• In 2018, rapper Vlad Valov (SHEF) recorded the song “Rostov Phantoms”

In Rostov-on-Don, one of the streets was named after the working shop No. 21 of the Oktyabrsky district food sales department Vladimir Yuryevich Martovitsky , who bravely tried to detain criminals from the gang of the Tolstopyatov brothers and was killed by them. By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “for the shown courage, courage and selfless actions in the detention of dangerous criminals” V. Yu. Martovitsky was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor ^[9] .

• N. I. Buslenko . The end of the "phantoms" (the case of Tolstopyatov and others) // "The prosecutor's office of the Rostov region at the turn of the century . " - Rostov-on-Don: Expert Bureau, 2000. - S. 269-277.
• Kostanov Yu. A. Case “Fantomasov” // Judicial speeches. And not only. (speech of the public prosecutor in court)
• Text: Larisa Ionova (Rostov-on-Don) . How the Fantomas was killed. The Tolstopyatov gang “woke up” the Soviet police. Rossiyskaya Gazeta // rg.ru (August 24, 2011)

• The gang of "Amazons" (2003—2013)
• White Cross (gang 1989-1990)

• Легенды Старого Ростова — братья Толстопятовы. Дюжина достоверных фактов из жизни «ростовских фантомасов». // olenalex.livejournal.com (17 октября 2009 года)
• Автор: Александр Пилипчук . «Граждане судьи! Смягчите наказание! Я — инвалид бандитизма!» // pravo.ru (11 февраля 2013 года)