In August 2010 two 23-year-old residents of Sargazy village in Sosnovsky district, Chelyabinsk Oblast, bought marijuana from suppliers to resell it at a higher price.[1] Chelyabinsk regional FSB officers seized about 50 kilograms of marijuana in a special operation that shut down the distribution channel.[1] The two men kept the drug in a hiding place they built in the hangar of a production and trading company where one of them worked.[1] They were detained by security officers before they managed to sell the marijuana, and a criminal case was opened against them.[1] The regional FSB press service confirmed the operation and the amount of about 50 kilograms to the Yekaterinburg-based news agency EAN.[2]

The same statement named the two suspects only by the initials K. and A.[2] FSB officers had been following the group and detained the men, then seized the whole batch of marijuana.[2] K. escaped from the investigators for a short time and was arrested on the Moscow–Novorossiysk train, where transport police and Novorossiysk counter-intelligence officers found him in a state of drug euphoria.[2] By 23 September K. was in Chelyabinsk and charged under point g of part 3 of article 228.1, the offence covering large-scale drug sales.[2] K. had two previous criminal records, while his partner A. had never faced prosecution before.[2] K.’s uncle had by then served five years in a strict-regime colony for selling two kilograms of marijuana.[2]

The investigative department of the Chelyabinsk FSB opened the criminal case against the dealers.[2] In December 2010 the Chelyabinsk FSB press service said the case against the two Sargazy men had gone to court.[3] In the same statement K.’s arrested father was described as the owner of two RPG-18 rocket launchers that FSB officers found in a forest cache near Sargazy, and the news agency said they had belonged to a group smuggling drugs from Kazakhstan.[3]

The Chelyabinsk Argumenty i Fakty account said the two were not aware of a surveillance team that had long been watching their new business.[4]

No arrests beyond the two men were reported for the seizure, and neither the exact day of the operation nor the fate of the men at trial was published in these accounts.[2]