A man has been sentenced to over nine years in prison for the 1994 murder of a prominent figure in the Russian underworld during a casino shooting. The victim, Sergei Puchkov, who was also known as Puchok and hailed from Zarechensk, was identified during court proceedings reported by News Tula. The Zarechensky District Court handed down a sentence of nine years and six months to the shooter on April 2025 in a trial that was conducted behind closed doors.
The court has not disclosed the shooter's full identity, referring to him only by the initial 'S' and revealing that he was born in 1969. Initially, the trial was public, but the media was barred from further proceedings after a request from 'one of the victims.'
The shooting, a shocking event during the turbulent early days of post-Soviet Russia, occurred in an era when casinos operated with minimal regulation. In the years since, the Kremlin has banned online casinos and limited land-based gambling to six designated areas. There are discussions about imposing fines on citizens who utilize online betting platforms.
Puchkov was killed at a casino on Tula's Oktyabrskaya Street on May 23, 1994, following a dispute among patrons. The shooter, S, entered the casino armed with an automatic weapon, believed to be either an AK-47 or an AK-74, and opened fire on Puchkov, hitting him with at least 15 bullets while wounding a casino employee, who later recovered. Following the attack, S fled the scene before law enforcement arrived.
In the wake of the shooting, a prolonged investigation by police failed to identify the shooter initially, leading to the case being shelved. However, in 2024, investigators made significant progress, uncovering new evidence linking S to the crime. The investigation was reopened, and detectives determined that S had multiple prior convictions, including for illegal weapon possession, robbery, and hooliganism.
In other developments, last month, Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives collaborated with the Russia Investigative Committee to raid an undisclosed domestic payments platform, arresting 24 individuals in the process. The FSB reported that they seized numerous bags filled with cash, and claimed that the platform was facilitating illegal transactions for online casinos, including Pin-Up, Pinco, and FreshCasino.
