'I was a star in prison': a Russian convicted in the United States for buying on eBay returned to his homeland

19 June in the United States condemned 42-year-old Russian developer of computer flight simulators Oleg Tishchenko. In 2011, he bought instructions on the work of the American F-16 fighter from the eBay online store. Five years later, the US authorities brought a criminal case against him, and at the beginning of 2019, they obtained his extradition from Georgia and brought him to court. "Medusa"Talked with Oleg Tishchenko who had returned to Russia about the charges and life in Georgian and American detention facilities.

Photo: Oleg Tishchenko's page in VKontakte

- You started working at Eagle Dynamics back in 2004. If you try to explain in simple language, what exactly did you do?

- Avionics - that is, cabin equipment, indicators, various displays and devices. The main task was to make a picture similar to what happens in life. We are not a design office and information about aircraft is very mediocre, so first of all we reproduce the picture, but we invent the logic behind it based on general considerations - from what we found in open sources, videos, and so on.

Our ultimate goal in realistic simulators is to make everything closer to reality. That is, if in life a device shows speed, then in our case it should also show speed.

- What was your position?

- Lead coder. Lead avionics developer, to be precise.

- Your colleagues told that for work you often bought technical manuals for various planes. This is true?

- I bought something often. But 95 percent of those manuals that I bought are absolutely inapplicable in work. I bought the manual because I am fond of aviation. Collected leadership, starting with aircraft of the Second World War. This is not an expensive hobby - on eBay the guide can be bought for 20-30 dollars.

- Did these manuals help in the work?

- Very little. For example, on the same F-16 - I didn’t have time to do it at all: at the time of my arrest, the development of the simulator was only carried out; at that time we hadn’t been engaged in the logic [of virtual equipment operation] - there was only a three-dimensional model of the aircraft. The situation is similar with other documents.

But they [guides for pilots] can really help. Because the operating instructions describe the display logic, the reaction logic for pressing buttons, and so on.

- How many guides did you have?

- Maybe two hundred, including everything that was once downloaded [on the Internet]. I bought for all the time about the order of 20 titles. Over time, I began to move away from collectibles, so 15-16 scanned them and then put it on sale on eBay to return some of the money spent on their purchase.

- And never had any problems with buying or selling?

- Never.

- Do you understand where individuals come from in general are similar sales manuals in such quantities?

- It’s a mystery, but in the US, individuals really have a lot of such manuals.

- Do these manuals have any secret information?

- Not. Secret documents can not be found. This is a taboo.

Guides you can buy are documents that are interesting to a very limited number of people. Any researcher who studies foreign equipment for the needs of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation will not receive anything useful from such documents. This is only the manual, so for it, for example, you can not reproduce the plane. No information about vulnerabilities in them either. All this information is a secret.

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- Did your company help you get these guides?

- No, this could be if it were, then in the year in 2008. Then I bought everything myself and on my own initiative.

- You asked the F-16 manuals to send you a stranger from the USA, because the seller with eBay did not send the documents directly to Russia. Did you do that before?

- Not. It was such a gesture of despair, because I really liked these guides. I was generally interested in the original documents, and I really like the F-16 as an embodiment of engineering. I was hoping to somehow use them in my work, but did not do it in the end.

- American users warned you that there may be problems due to the purchase of these manuals and their shipment to Russia. Why didn't you listen?

- I thought that people are reinsured. What is this American law abiding? I knew it was not only sold on eBay. There are sites that calmly googling, and they sell the same guide. Of course, there was a nuance in export restrictions. It is assumed that such documents will not be sold to citizens of other countries. But this is also naive - you can always buy and transfer a copy. That is, I had no doubts.

- Another reason for accusations against you was your correspondence with an agent of American intelligence services under cover in 2016. He himself stepped on you and offered to buy manuals for other aircraft. Didn't this conversation seem strange to you?

- Questions have arisen, but too late. At first he just wrote to me and said: “I have the opportunity to get the documents. What would you like? ”I was not surprised - such enthusiasts exist. Terribly happy and wrote him a list. For the F-35 and F-22, I didn’t initially ask for manuals, because these are relatively new aircraft and in the US there could be questions about where the guidelines for them came from in Russia. But then he said that getting the manuals for these planes is also quite simple. He said that he already has all the documents, but he is afraid to send them. And he offered to meet somewhere abroad. Then I immediately realized that this was some kind of nonsense. No one would do this when you can send a link to a copy of the document and that's it.

Фото: Depositphotos

But I continued to communicate with him. If I stopped communicating, he would understand that I guessed something. Every six months we corresponded, congratulated each other on their birthday. He asked if I still thought up buying the documents. So we corresponded until the spring of 2018, when I wrote to him that I would definitely not buy anything, because such a purchase can cause questions if I find these guides. He agreed and said: "Well, write, if that."

- When did you know for sure that your activities are being investigated in the USA?

“In the autumn of 2017, I tried to get a visa to Germany, but I was not given it.” As I know now, at that time, an order for my arrest had already appeared in Interpol. Therefore, they could not give me a visa - they returned my passport and invited me to a meeting at the consulate. I came, and there they told me that there was no need to try to get a visa at the offices of other Schengen countries. They explained that traveling to one of the western countries can be dangerous for me. They did not say that it was connected with Interpol, but mentioned that my situation was somehow connected with the law prohibiting the export of arms. I immediately realized that all this was related to my activities on eBay, since in 2016, they blocked my account there with a similar wording.

- Why did you then go to Georgia in the summer of 2018, where you were detained?

- Because I was sure: if something happens, I will just be interrogated. Maximum - they will stop at the border, get into some room, ask a bunch of questions, and then let go. Moreover, Georgia is not part of the European Union, and by that time I had already stopped buying manuals, since my account [in the online store] had been blocked.

I was let through the border. I went to the dance festival in Batumi. There I was detained on the very first day, around 11 hours of the evening - the Georgian police came to the party. Their appearance didn’t put me on my guard, but at a party they found me in a photo, grabbed my hand, pulled me away from another dance partner, and very quickly took me to my car. They did this at Interpol's request.

- Did they conduct any investigative actions or did you immediately start extradition to the USA?

- They have no right to investigate, so there was nothing. I spent three days in the bullpen, then there was a trial as I went. Of course, I was arrested and taken to a penitentiary in Kutaisi. There I spent a month in solitary confinement under video surveillance. Then they transferred me to Tbilisi - they send everyone who goes through the extradition case there. I met many such people there - although they tried to extradite them to the country of their citizenship, and not to the United States.

- How long did you stay in Tbilisi?

- Eight months. Already not alone, but in a normal camera. It is clear that I have nothing to do with the criminal world, so there was a fairly normal camera and normal people. There was one reputable dude named Lasha. Under his tutelage, everyone sat in our six-person cell.

- What were the conditions?

- Shower twice a week. You can call home abroad twice a week, but calls are paid.

In general, everything was civilized. There was no violence. I really and could not meet with the criminal world. Everything is fine - the books were read, the TV looked. Everyone understood that I was there by chance. Plus there were people who served in the Soviet army and they were very positive towards Russia. Better than to America. Everything was OK.

“Why did the extradition take so much time?”

- I do not know. Maybe Georgia waited for the reaction of Russia, but it did not wait. There were generally three extradition trials. At first, the case file was declared insufficient for extradition, I was arrested for three months. At the second, new materials did not appear and it was decided to study the existing ones - I was detained for another three months. And now the next court declared the extradition lawful. Then there were appeals, but they did not help. As a result, I was simply taken out of the cell, taken to the airport, where they handed over to the American marshals who were transporting prisoners. Then a flight from Georgia to Riga, then to Amsterdam, and from there to Salt Lake City. We flew on an ordinary plane with the rest of the passengers.

- Do you know that the Russian Foreign Ministry somehow tried to help you in Georgia?

- I did not notice anything like that.

- You paid the lawyer yourself?

- No, many thanks to my employers for this. They paid a lawyer, transferred me money so that I could buy some food and cigarettes in a local shop. They also helped my family - my brother and father.

- In the US, you were immediately taken to prison?

- Yes. Sent immediately from the airport. In our prison, in which I spent three months, there were 800 prisoners. In the US, conditions of detention are highly dependent on the crime of which the person is accused. For example, in our prison there were four levels. The first is the toughest for those accused of something very serious. They sit in double cameras, there is no TV, and they only let out of the camera for an hour.

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I had a fourth level - as easy as possible for my charge. We had a large hall and four booths with transparent walls, each on 12 people. Cameras [for prisoners] were not. Kubrick closed at night and an hour and a half after eating. The rest of the time we spent in the common hall. There was a TV and four telephones for calls — you could call freely and talk as much as you like. There was limited internet access — you can send emails and read Fox and CNN news.

- How were you treated? There are probably not very many Russians there.

- Yes, I knew only about one. He was sitting in another county [of Utah] on charges of some serious fraud. There are no more Russians there, so I was a wonder for them. And after we all read together in the newspapers also articles about my business, I was there celebrities. Before that, I told people about my crime, but there guys are simple. They asked: “Is this espionage?” I said no, and explained what I did. Then they asked how much it threatened me. I said that, probably, about five years. They replied: “Oh, well, no luck. Fight it. All treated very positively. There were no problems.

“How did you yourself treat the charges against you in custody?”

- I understood that I had broken the law. But on the other hand: if I violated, then everyone else who sells such manuals also violates it. What, all you need to sit down? Inside, there was a feeling that everything they [the US authorities] are doing is too much. My lawyer also said that he did not understand what I was doing in prison, that this is a very strange thing. He even asked if I was not a spy.

- By the way, why did you have a free lawyer?

- Because hiring a private lawyer there is in the area of ​​50 thousands of dollars. And, unfortunately, they do not always work well. I have seen such examples in our [American] prison. They take the money, and then behave disgustingly.

- What was the most difficult in prison?

- It was hard and dreary to wait. Plus deprivation from everything. Well, very worried about the family.

- Why did you end up with such a gentle punishment, although initially you were threatened with more than 10 years in prison?

- My lawyer submitted to the court a document in which he stated that I need to remove the charges related to correspondence with an undercover agent. He argued that I had not made any significant steps to purchase documents — I did not go abroad or even made an appointment. The prosecution formally stated that it insists, but the lawyer told me: apparently, they understand their weak position and it is possible to agree on a deal. They offered to drop three out of five charges from me - apart from two points about correspondence with an agent, it also conspired against the United States, which appeared in the case because I agreed with the American about sending documents to F-16 in Russia.

Photo: Oleg Tishchenko's page in VKontakte

I pleaded guilty to two counts - the export and smuggling of documents not subject to export from the United States. I was given a term of imprisonment and was released on condition of deportation to Russia. Such an outcome, of course, is partly the merit of a lawyer who did everything very quickly. He is well done, but such steps to protect were obvious.

- In the USA, did your company continue to help you?

- Yes, they helped with money and with some information.

- And the Russian Foreign Ministry?

- [After publications in the media] they asked if any help was needed. But at that time, all domestic issues have already been resolved. On the whole, there was a feeling that the matter was nearing completion.

- When they started to write a lot about you in the press, Eagle Dynamics released a statement saying that you did everything alone and they had nothing to do with it. Have you seen him?

- Saw. I think they did everything right. They disowned the fact that they were in any way connected with my actions. After all, all this could turn into accusations against the company, and I love my job and do not want to lose it. And they do not want to lose their company. It was all right. I had no offense - they helped me.

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By the way, we have already agreed that I will return to my work. I'll start right on Monday in the same post. They themselves asked if I wanted to return.

- What have you already managed to do after returning to Russia?

- At the airport, I was met by my brother, friends and a lot of journalists. We answered a couple of questions and ran away. We sat in the bar, it was a great joy.

Now I am trying to adapt to ordinary life. Still, the year spent in a different, very isolated environment. It was especially hard in Georgia, where everyone watched TV only in Georgian. But over time, when I was already there for a long time, they began to listen to me — they turned on the news on NTV and waited while I watched them.

- So you are aware of events in Russia?

- Yes, for example, I know about Maria Butina. I heard about the case of Ivan Golunov. There was great joy [after his release].

- What are you planning to do next?

- I'll be back to work. Probably, at first we will long discuss everything that happened and laugh. And then back to normal life - dancing and so on.

- How do you now, already at liberty, perceive everything that happened?

- Everything has already ended and ended only with a year of imprisonment, so now there is already a feeling that it was all a great experience. For example, I got a lot of side knowledge - I learned a bunch of English words, I started to speak a little Georgian. Now all this is already perceived as an adventure. Yes, a visa to the States will not give, but nothing fatal. All this was not such a big injury.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• 22 June 2011, Oleg Tishchenko posted a message on the forum of fans of flight simulators asking him to help him buy instructions on eBay for pilots and manuals for the American F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter. Tishchenko explained to users that the seller could send the goods to the buyer only within the United States and asked someone to send instructions to Russia. One of the American users agreed to send the purchase to Moscow.
• In 2016, on Tishchenko and his American assistant filed a case in america. Oleg Tischenko was immediately accused of five counts, including conspiracy against the United States, an attempt to smuggle, and a violation of legislation to control the export of arms. The documents sent to him were deemed to be related to the defense capability of the United States, while such documents are prohibited from exporting to Russia, as well as to Belarus, North Korea, Iran and countries in respect of which the arms embargo was imposed by the United States.
• In the summer of 2018, Oleg Tishchenko was detained in Georgia, where he went on vacation to a dance festival. In the spring of 2019, he was extradited to the United States and some time delayed the trial of his case. From the American assistant, who sent Tishchenko documents to Moscow, all the charges were dropped.
• 19 June 2019 year trial in USA sentenced Tishchenko. After this, he was “self-deported” to Russia.

Read also on ForumDaily:

'A little secret': why the trial of Russian Tishchenko was postponed in the USA

Russian 10 faces years in prison in the United States for purchasing aircraft instructions on eBay

In the USA, a Russian citizen sentenced to jail for a purchase on e-Bay was sentenced

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