The main counterfeiter of the Soviet Union. How they filmed “Money” and what is true and what is fiction in the series

Counterfeiting is one of the oldest criminal professions - as soon as money appeared, people immediately appeared who began to counterfeit it. Every year in Russia the number of detected fakes grows by 20-30%.

April 12, 1977. Cherkessk. Kolkhoz market. The Adyghe salesman had just told the police how a few minutes ago a buyer had approached him with a request to exchange twenty-five-ruble notes. Traders were asked to pay attention if someone offered quarter or fifty dollars on the market? So he converted. Yes, of course, he will show the buyer. This is the one with the briefcase.
The documents of the suspicious buyer turned out to be in order: Viktor Ivanovich Baranov, a resident of Stavropol. But the police couldn’t even dream of how he ended up with cash in order. Viktor Ivanovich had 1,925 rubles in quarter notes in his briefcase. These 77 banknotes became for Baranov what 33 irons were for Professor Pleischner - a sign of failure.

- So who are you? — the investigator asked him when the police took the owner of the suspicious money to the police station.
“I am a counterfeiter,” answered the king of counterfeiters.
From the point of view law enforcement agencies, this story began in the mid-70s. By 1977, in 76 regions of the USSR, from Vilnius to Tashkent, 46 counterfeit banknotes of the fifty-ruble denomination and 415 of the twenty-five-ruble denomination were identified, which, according to experts, had a single source of origin. Exclusively high quality counterintelligence made counterintelligence suspect the CIA, which, of course, could easily print rubles in a factory way in the USA and then distribute them through agents to the USSR. Along with the spy version, the traditional version was also checked - it was assumed that the counterfeiters received technology directly from Goznak. More than five hundred employees of the enterprise were under round-the-clock surveillance by the KGB for almost a year, until a repeated examination established that Goznak had nothing to do with it - just someone in the country was too well versed in the process of printing money.
Counterintelligence regretfully abandoned the idea of ​​finding American sowers scattering banknotes in the USSR, and the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs focused on searching for a group of counterfeiters within the country.
Gradually, it was possible to determine that in the south of Russia, high-quality counterfeits appear more often than in other regions. Then the circle of searches narrowed to the Stavropol region, where in three months of 1977 86 counterfeit twenty-five-ruble bills were immediately identified. And finally, thanks to the vigilance of the Adyghe seller, the first, as the security forces believed, member of the criminal group was captured.
It must be said that at the time of his arrest Baranov was... freelancer Stavropol OBKHSS. As a driver, Viktor Ivanovich took two security officers on raids to all sorts of “grain places” - senior lieutenant Alexander Nikolchenko and major Yuri Baranov (namesake). And it had to happen that at the time of the arrest the senior leader was in Pyatigorsk, where he was just catching the notorious elusive counterfeiter! I found out that he was caught in Cherkessk, and received an order to deliver the captured man to Stavropol. Imagine the opera’s amazement when he saw his partner in front of him!.. “I knew that Yura and Sasha were looking for me, but I never asked them a question... I would never use our friendly relations“, Baranov admits.
“I decided for myself a long time ago,” says Baranov, “if they catch me, I won’t twist and turn. I never lied to the police." The police did not know about this then, however, and considered Viktor Ivanovich a courier for counterfeiters, who decided to take all the blame on himself in order to shield his accomplices. Because one person cannot produce counterfeit money of such impeccable quality!

“I was taken to Stavropol as a general,” recalls Baranov. “There were two traffic police cars with flashing lights ahead.”
There he immediately led the police to his barn, where a search revealed a compact printing press, stacks of printed money and five notebooks describing many years of research. On the same day, a report was placed on the desk of Minister of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, and the very next morning a group of Moscow experts flew to Stavropol.
During the investigative experiment, Viktor Ivanovich, in front of distinguished guests, created watermarks on paper, rolled letterpress and intaglio seals, cut the sheet and applied the treasury number with a numberer. By the end of the performance, there were no longer any skeptics left in the room. Everyone believed in a miracle and that the wizard needed to serve a decent amount of time.
After which, by decision of the Chief investigation department The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR added a hundred more similar cases to criminal case No. 193 regarding the discovery of counterfeit banknotes of twenty-five rubles in denomination, where it all began. In the USSR people were also sentenced to death for lesser crimes.
Vitya Baranov developed an interest in money as a child, when he began collecting a collection of old banknotes. But he came to the conclusion that he could make money himself much later... In Stavropol, where the future criminal genius studied at a regular school, he was always in good standing with the teachers. Until the fifth grade, Vitya Baranov was an excellent student, and his behavior was always exemplary. Among his favorite school subjects was drawing... The guy went to art school, painted beautiful sunsets... And what he was best at was making copies of famous paintings - “Alyonushka” by Vasnetsov, “Morning in pine forest» Shishkin and others.
After seventh grade, Vitya Baranov went to Rostov-on-Don to study at a construction school. Within a year, he mastered the specialty of a parquet carpenter. He also really wanted to become a pilot. Collected with a friend at the flying club large group I started working with the same guys parachuting. Victor made several jumps. At the draft board he was told that he needed to commit two more, and he would be drafted. landing troops. But, heeding his mother’s lamentations, Baranov completed a driver’s course at DOSAAF and went to serve in a motor battalion. Moreover, he was the secretary of the Komsomol organization of his unit.
After the army, Victor worked at one time as a freight forwarder in the Stavropol regional party committee. And twice he even drove Mikhail Gorbachev, at that time the third secretary of the Komsomol Committee, home from work at night.
— When I started making money, I was one hundred percent sure that nothing would work out. But it was interesting to test my capabilities,” recalls Stavropol “Kulibin”.

He worked on the banknotes for 12 years. During this time, I thoroughly studied as many as 12 printing specialties - from engraver to printer. For three years he “invented” the watermark himself, and for two years he “invented” intaglio printing ink. I studied textbooks for printing students, even went to Moscow, studied at Leninka rare books“in his specialty”... He had to do a lot by trial and error.
The inventor locked himself in his barn on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street in Stavropol and worked literally day and night. The fruits of this work can be seen today in the Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The whole room is occupied by Baranov’s “exhibition”, which was transported to Moscow in no less than two KamAZ trucks!
The forgery genius is especially proud of the solution he invented for removing copper oxides during etching. On this task for a long time All the printers of the world fought. Terribly labor-intensive and painstaking work! And Baranov built a reagent from four components - two poison copper, two remove its oxides. Everything takes a minute or two... Goznak worked for 14 years on this etching agent, which received the secret name “Baranovsky”.
The first banknote that Baranov made was a fifty-ruble note. One to one with the original in the most small details. The only thing, out of respect for Lenin, the counterfeiter made the leader twenty years younger. And this was not noticed in any bank!
He produced only a few fifty kopecks - 70 pieces. Caucasians in the markets grabbed them with their hands and asked for more. But the Stavropol resident decided to make the “quarter” - the most secure of Soviet banknotes. “If the ruble were the most difficult thing, I would do it... I wasn’t interested in money as such,” laughs Viktor Ivanovich.

Even the police admit that Baranov used his money machine very modestly. The only serious acquisition in all these years was a car. And then, according to Viktor Ivanovich, the entire amount was paid to him from honest labor savings. “I didn’t go to restaurants, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t have girls. And there was no TV, there was only a small refrigerator. I didn’t need to - I was doing work.” All the money was spent on the production of new equipment. He did not give counterfeit bills to his family. “My wife once asked where the money came from,” Baranov recalls. — I said that I offer my inventions to factories. I didn’t give my wife a lot of money - 25, 30, 50 rubles.”
In parallel with his study of coinage, Baranov observed the behavior of sellers in the markets in order to understand how money “moves.” For example, fishmongers always take banknotes with wet hands, and meatmongers often have blood on their hands. Caucasians willingly accept new crisp banknotes. As a result, Baranov added 70 fifty dollars, after which he decided to give up on them. Tired of candy wrappers.
However, Baranov immediately lost interest in the money he made. He was not interested in wealth - he simply needed funds to implement other bold projects. He calculated that this would require about 30 thousand rubles. No sooner said than done!
But the trouble was when Baranov took him to Crimea to change his money, bought two kilograms of tomatoes from an old woman, walked away and only a few minutes later realized that he didn’t have a suitcase with him. He returned, and the old woman was like that, taking with her money for a good house...
The bungling inventor had to turn it on again printing press, which he was about to disassemble and scatter in parts into different ponds.
Baranov did not even think about counterfeiting the currency. But during one of his trips to the capital, he bought a dollar from a dealer - for his collection. Having looked at it more closely, I was convinced how easy it is to make money...
Baranov had no friends, because friends like to visit without knocking. For suspicious neighbors, he regularly organized a “day open doors" Curious old women who looked into the workshop had a view of the metalworking machine, the enlarger and the developing tanks - Baranov hid all the most interesting things in disassembled form under the shelves. Only a suspicious neighbor-hunter continued to believe that Baranov was pouring shot in the barn at night.

It was when creating a new batch of quarter notes that the maestro made a fatal mistake. While securing the cliche to create a protective net, Baranov did not pay attention to the fact that the cliche was upside down. As a result, after printing the money, he discovered that in the place where the wave should have risen, there was a descent. Considering that no one would notice this, he decided not to reject the batch. However, in one of the banks where such a bill eventually ended up, an eagle-eyed cashier noticed the difference and raised the alarm. From that moment on, as they say in thrillers, Baranov had only a few months left to live in freedom.
“By the time of my arrest, all my equipment had been dismantled,” he says. “I was going to drive through ponds and lakes and scatter it there in parts.” I didn’t throw it away only because it’s April and it’s muddy and you can’t get through it. And thank God. Otherwise, divers would have to look for these parts at the bottom of reservoirs.”
From the Stavropol pre-trial detention center, Baranov was transported to Moscow, to Butyrka. Every day he was visited by specialists, to whom, over the course of twelve investigative experiments, he demonstrated the victory of the human mind over Goznak.
The Goznak technologist wrote in his conclusion: “The counterfeit banknotes of 25 and 50 rubles produced by V.I. Baranov are externally close to genuine banknotes and are difficult to identify in circulation. That is why this counterfeit was very dangerous and could cause distrust of the population in genuine banknotes.”
Viktor Ivanovich willingly shared his work. He hid for twelve years, and finally people appeared who were able to appreciate his talent and titanic work. The king of counterfeiters happily gave out the recipe for his solution, which etched copper several times faster than it was done in Goznak (under the name “Baranovsky solvent” it was used in production for the next 15 years). For the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, Baranov outlined recommendations on ten pages for improving the protection of rubles from counterfeiting... Probably, Viktor Ivanovich told the competent authorities a lot of other useful things, considering that the execution sentence was replaced with a colony, and he was given three years less than the maximum sentence. “I printed little money,” Baranov offers his explanation of the court’s humanity. - Otherwise they would have shot you. But you know what I’ll tell you: it would be better if they shot him. I wouldn’t suffer for eleven years, with my hands shaking from hunger, snow, wet feet and ten cars with concrete that need to be shoveled. Every day". In fact, Baranov printed a lot - about 30,000 rubles, but he put only a small fraction of this money into circulation, most of it remained in the barn.

Baranov served his sentence in a special regime colony in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region. Like a true passionary, he showed his talents there too: “I wrote for the newspaper. Once won a competition best article for all ITKs. Then they sent me a bonus - 10 rubles. And I was a director - I headed amateur performances. We had more than three hundred people in the choir, and took first place for seven years in a row.” Baranov also made the scenery for his productions, be it the Maxim machine gun or the coat of arms of the USSR, blinking lights in time with the recited poems.
In the “zone” Baranov enjoyed great authority. Contrary to local regulations, the prisoners did not give him a nickname, but called him respectfully by his first name and patronymic.
Returning to Stavropol after imprisonment in 1990, Baranov again began to invent. “The meaning of a person’s life is creative work,” he believes, waving off 11 years of age. “What was given to me, I realized, even if I had to endure a lot of suffering and serve time.”
He still had no friends, his first wife divorced him in the ninth year of imprisonment, all that was left was to invent. At the Analog plant, where he soon got a job, Baranov offered new method extension of nickel mesh in batteries. “They told me then: “Who are you? Experts from Germany came here, but they didn’t come up with anything new!” And I promised them that they would supply me with more cognac. And so it happened.”
Then Baranov opened the Franza company to produce perfumes. I made six barrels of perfume, 200 liters each. But a few years later the company closed, unable to withstand the competition with the wave of cheap foreign perfumes. “Their boxes were beautiful, but the inside was crap.”
Baranov invented a method for cleaning potatoes from soil, stones and other inclusions. The ingenious solution is to pour everything into a container filled with salt water. The potatoes will float, the rest will sink to the bottom. I wanted to patent my invention, but was refused because I filled out the form incorrectly...
This was followed by a series of new inventions: ceramic car paint, resistant to acids and alkalis, furniture made from paper waste, water-based furniture varnish, adhesive paste, lightweight brick, healing balm. Some of the inventions were successfully implemented, some received royalties... This is how Viktor Ivanovich lives today - in a hostel with his young wife and child. Modestly, but with the hope of recognition.
And at the request of a Moscow company, Viktor Ivanovich developed his own trade protection system, which is much more effective than barcodes.
Baranov lives with his wife and little son in a room in a simple Stavropol dorm. This is where he stores all his equipment.
Baranov never had any thoughts about going abroad. So what if they value brains more highly? He doesn't particularly value money. He needs them only to invent something new. And he also says that he will never give away the technology for making “Baranovsky” banknotes to anyone.

" How they filmed “Money” and what is true and what is fiction in the series. We figure out who came up with the idea for the project, which of the characters have prototypes and what impressions the actors had from the work.

The idea for “Money” belongs to screenwriter Liliya Kim, with whom director Yegor Anashkin is friends. It was she who came up with the idea of ​​making a series about the most famous counterfeiter of the Soviet era and began writing the script. But Lilia’s life circumstances were such that she had to leave for America without completing her work. The script was finalized by the project's creative team.

History had good potential. Yegor Anashkin initially liked the main character for his ambiguity. On the one hand, he is a villain because he is involved in crime, but on the other hand, taking into account the fact that circumstances forced him to take the criminal path, it is impossible not to sympathize with him. Main character and he himself suffers, finding himself in a hopeless situation.

Where truth ends and fiction begins The story told in the series "Money" is based on real events, but for the most part it is still fiction.

The prototype of the main character Alexei Barannikov was the inventor and artist Viktor Baranov, who in the USSR was called counterfeiter No. 1. Only the main milestones were taken from his biography: he worked as a driver, and even drove Gorbachev, was an inventor and sang opera songs. The love story was entirely invented by the scriptwriters. Fyodor Lavrov and Olga Dykhovichnaya in the TV series “Money”

Representatives of the channel went to Stavropol and tried to find the house in which Baranov lived. There were no relatives left there, but the neighbors turned out to be very aggressive.

“This is only the main one in the series Soviet counterfeiter such a romantic, but in reality he was not like that,” says series director Yegor Anashkin.

Approved on main role Fyodor Lavrov initially plunged headlong into the biographical material, but stopped in time. “I watched a bunch of interviews with Baranov, went to the Ministry of Internal Affairs museum, talked with different people who dealt with this problem. Thank God, I had enough time and managed to dig up facts that were important to me. I even wanted to go to Stavropol, because I found information on the Internet that Baranov was still alive. But Egor (director of the series Egor Anashkin - Ed.) dissuaded me from this idea, explaining that ours was not a biopic, but a made-up story. At first I was tempted to go into biography.

In the end, I only hired characteristic features and details,” recalls the actor. “This story is not about money, but about love and the inability of a person to be happy. We tried to put the heroes before difficult choices.

For example, the heroine of Olga Dykhovichnaya works as a policeman, and it seems to her that she can never betray her Motherland under any circumstances, and therefore she has no happiness,” explains Yegor Anashkin. Olga Dykhovichnaya in the series “Money” “My heroine had no real prototype. It is quite possible that there was some kind of sympathy during the investigation, but there was definitely no love line that would lead to a change in its course.

My heroine is an honest and valiant person, a fanatic, and she has no other goal in life than to achieve victory in her cause. Nina traded personal happiness for service. At some point you sympathize with her, but you understand that she has no right to risk herself and people,” shares Olga Dykhovichnaya, who plays Nina Filatova in the series. About the hero and his ambiguity “It seems to me that, as a character, Alexei Barannikov is, of course, worth loving. But I would not give an unambiguous assessment of this personality - whether he was a hero or a villain.

The world is not divided into black and white: there are many shades. A person is also not painted with just one paint. Therefore, it is fundamentally wrong to label people,” series director Yegor Anashkin explains his attitude towards the main character of “Money.” Fyodor Lavrov in the TV series “Money” They were looking for an actor for the main role for a long time - the casting was large-scale.

“The situation was ambiguous. It seemed to us that the producers would want an actor in the series, whom viewers are accustomed to seeing in the role of a hero. And Fedya (Fedor Lavrov - editor's note) is unprepossessing... Many in the creative group of the series believed that they would not approve his candidacy, because they needed a handsome guy for the main role. Fortunately, the channel agreed to meet us. The producers agreed with our opinion that the actor's face should match the character, and not just be beautiful. I am immensely grateful that everyone I wanted was approved,” says Yegor Anashkin. “I can’t say that I completely justify my hero, but first of all, I look for a person in him, and not a villain and a swindler.

And it is very important to distinguish Baranov from Barannikov. As for the artistic image, I will fight for it to the end. But I have a lot of questions for Baranov. But I take my hat off to him, because not everyone can do this. He was definitely a man of great perseverance,” says Fyodor Lavrov, who plays Alexei Barannikov.

The actor had to go through large number samples before it was approved, and gain seven kilograms before filming began. Lavrov recalls that while working on this role, he overeated. In addition, Baranov had luxuriant hair, but the actor could not boast of such. However, he grew his hair long to fit the look and get closer to the hairstyles of the era. Fyodor Lavrov in the series “Money” Still, despite the fact that the series is a work of fiction and mostly fiction, the real prototype of the main character, Viktor Baranov, was the starting point when creating the image on the screen. Now Fyodor Lavrov is already thin and shaved, as he is filming in another project. How money was printed for the series Traditionally, excerpts from documentary chronicles are taken for filming - footage in which the state sign appears.

But the director of the series, Yegor Anashkin, was categorically against taking this path. Therefore, the search began for an old printing house in which the printing presses of that time were preserved. We found one, and it is still functioning, and ordered a circulation of money for the series there. A lot of banknotes were printed. In general, they spent a lot of money, but they showed the process of printing money from all sides. Still from the series “Money” As for the machines invented by Barannikov that appear in the frame, they are fake and non-functional. “In the end, our task was to make a film, not to print money,” jokes director Yegor Anashkin. The prop masters used old machines and modified them as necessary. "On film set There were consultants who helped understand the process. We immersed ourselves in everything. After all, if you don’t do this, then how can you play? Of course, I’m unlikely to be able to print five thousand at home. This requires enormous knowledge. Baranov himself spent 10 years studying the process and independently mastered 20 typographic and publishing professions in his barn in order to understand how to make paper, how to use state signs, what paints are needed, etc. But now I know some secrets and can paper to distinguish a fake,” says Fyodor Lavrov. How the era was recreated Part of the filming took place in Crimea. One of the main filming locations was the legendary Moscow ZIL - Open Joint-Stock Moscow Company “Plant named after I. A. Likhachev” (abbreviated as AMO ZIL. - Ed.). All the offices that appear in the series were filmed there. “This is a fantastic place! There we couldn’t shake the feeling that we were in Chernobyl (imagine - the plant in Moscow looks like Chernobyl!).

It seemed that the people who worked at the plant were forced to leave their homes and never returned there. And since then everything has remained untouched. Under one of the tables there were women's shoes that some employee might have changed into, and there were pens, pieces of paper, certificates, badges, and personal belongings everywhere. There was a lot of furniture and telephones left,” recalls the series director. Fyodor Lavrov and Olga Dykhovichnaya in the TV series “Money” “One of the strongest impressions from filming was that we found last days existence of the giant ZIL. I didn’t expect the scale of that era.

Filming on ZIL was reminiscent of a film about the apocalypse. Imagine: large corridors, paper that was blown by the wind... All this, by the way, is in the series.

Looking at the ruins, you understand how quickly the work of many thousands of people can depreciate,” (in the XV, many believe that only in Ukraine everything is terribly bad, but in Russia it’s just wildly bad!) - actress Olga Dykhovichnaya shares her impressions of filming at ZIL.

But the plant where the heroine Luda works in the story is real. It is located in the Moscow region and is still functioning. This is a glass factory. The Volga that Barannikov drives is really from that time. And all the other cars that the viewer sees in the series are vintage. The actors themselves drove these cars. When working on the image, Olga Dykhovichnaya was guided by her mother. “I remember what dresses, shoes, hairstyles she wore,” explains the actress. “I brought prescription glasses into the image because I realized that I needed an accessory that would distinguish me from the heroine.” In life, Olga does not wear glasses. The actress's costumes were made according to patterns from that era. Fyodor Lavrov and Olga Dykhovichnaya in the TV series “Money” Fyodor Lavrov often begs for hats after filming - like a fetish talisman.

The actor already has a whole collection at home. He rarely wears these hats; for example, he might wear them to the store. Lavrov also asked the costume designers for the series “Money” to put aside the caps he wore for filming for him. “The filming process was really difficult, because it was necessary to meet deadlines, establish relationships with partners on the set, and ensure the veracity of the reproduction. But the interest outweighed.

I want to express my deep gratitude to the entire film crew, because the guys worked for the idea - they worked until they fell. There was not a single person on the site who had any complaints. You rarely see such honest work in both cinema and theater. And if it didn’t exist, then there wouldn’t be a project,” sums up Fyodor Lavrov.”

The film came out interesting, but it exposed the lies of the USSR and Putin’s Russian Federation today.

With the advent of money, many criminal professions arose, one of which is counterfeiting.

At one time, the criminal talent of Viktor Baranov shocked Goznak specialists and the USSR police with his skill in making counterfeit banknotes. Even now, many years later, he continues to bring his unexpected inventions into reality.

On April 12, 1977, an Adyghe seller from the collective farm market in Cherkessk turned to the police and said that a few minutes ago a buyer had asked him to change several twenty-five-ruble banknotes. Previously, traders were asked to report any cases where someone is offering quarters or fifty dollars. The seller pointed to a citizen with a briefcase.

The citizen’s documents turned out to be in order: Viktor Ivanovich Baranov, resident of Stavropol. But the contents of the briefcase aroused suspicion. It turned out there were 1925 rubles in quarter tickets.

— So who are you?- the investigator at the department asked him.

— I'm a counterfeiter- answered the king of counterfeiters.

For the police, the story begins back in the mid-70s.

By 1977, 46 counterfeit banknotes of the fifty-ruble denomination and 415 of the twenty-five-ruble denomination were identified in the USSR, which, according to experts, had a single source of origin. The first suspicions fell on the CIA and Goznak employees. For more than a year, investigators observed the company's employees until they agreed that someone else was well versed in printing money. The version of CIA involvement disappeared by itself and efforts were concentrated on searching within the country.

Over time, it has been established that high-quality fakes appear more often in the south of the country. Gradually, the search circle narrowed to Stavropol, where in three months 86 counterfeit twenty-five-ruble bills were identified. And finally, thanks to the Adyghe seller, the counterfeiter was captured. The police assumed that he was a member of a criminal gang.

It is worth saying that Baranov was a freelance employee of the Stavropol OBKhSS. He was a driver by profession and took senior lieutenant Alexander Nikolchenko and major Yuri Baranov on raids. " I knew that Yura and Sasha were looking for me, but I never asked them a question... I would never use our friendly relations to my advantage“, Baranov admits.

« I decided for myself a long time ago If they catch me, I won’t twist and turn. I have never lied to the police" Until recently, the police considered Viktor Ivanovich a minor figure in the party of counterfeiters, who decided to take all the blame upon himself.

« I was taken to Stavropol as a general, IN two traffic police cars with flashing lights were driving ahead».

During the search, a compact printing press, stacks of printed money and five notebooks describing research were discovered. On the same day, a report was placed on the desk of Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, and the next day a group of Moscow experts flew out.

During the investigative experiment, Viktor Ivanovich created watermarks on paper, letterpress and intaglio printing, cut the sheet and applied the treasury number with a numberer. By the end of the performance, there were no longer any skeptics left in the room.

Viktor Baranov developed an interest in money as a child, when he collected a collection of old banknotes. He was always in good standing with teachers, was an excellent student until the fifth grade, attended art school, wrote beautiful sunsets. He was best at making copies of famous paintings - “Alyonushka” by Vasnetsov, “Morning in a Pine Forest” by Shishkin and others.

After seventh grade, Victor went to Rostov-on-Don to study at a construction school. Within a year, he mastered the specialty of a parquet carpenter and wanted to become a pilot. At the flying club I gathered a large group of guys and began to engage in parachuting, making several jumps. Having listened to his mother, Baranov abandoned the idea of ​​going into the airborne forces, completed a driver’s course at DOSAAF and went to serve in a motor battalion.

- When I started making money, I was one hundred percent sure that nothing would work out. But it was interesting to test my capabilities,- Victor recalls.

Over 12 years of research, he mastered more than a dozen printing specialties, devoted three years to the invention of the watermark, two to intaglio printing ink. I studied textbooks for printing students for a long time. The inventor worked day and night, locked in his barn. The results of the work can be seen today in the Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The exhibition occupies an entire room.

The genius is especially proud of the solution he invented for removing copper oxides during etching. All printers in the world have been struggling with this problem for a long time. Baranov built a reagent from four components - two poison copper, two remove its oxides. The entire process takes less than two minutes. Subsequently, Goznak worked for 14 years on this etching agent, which received the secret name “Baranovsky”.

Baranov's first banknote was a fifty-ruble note. It had only one difference from the original - out of respect for Lenin, the counterfeiter made the leader twenty years younger. He produced only a few fifty kopecks - 70 pieces. The Stavropol resident decided to make the quarter, the most secure of Soviet banknotes. " If the ruble were the most difficult thing, I would do it... I wasn’t interested in money as such».

The only serious acquisition in all these years was a car. According to Viktor Ivanovich, the entire amount was paid to him from honest labor savings. " I didn’t go to restaurants, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t have girls. And there was no TV, there was only a small refrigerator. I didn't need to - I was doing work" All the money was spent on the production of new equipment. He did not give counterfeit bills to his family. " My wife once asked where the money came from,- recalls Baranov. — I said that I offer my inventions to factories. I didn’t give my wife a lot of money - 25, 30, 50 rubles».

Baranov often observed the behavior of sellers in the markets and analyzed how money “moves.” He noticed that fishmongers always take banknotes with wet hands, and meatmongers often have blood on their hands. And Caucasians willingly take new crisp bills. As a result, Baranov added 70 fifty dollars, after which he decided to give up on them.

He was not interested in wealth - he just needed funds for other projects. He calculated that this would require about 30 thousand rubles. The required amount was printed and the inventor went to Crimea to change money. Unfortunately for him, the tomato seller stole his suitcase with money and the machine had to be turned on again.

Baranov had no friends. He organized an “open day” for suspicious neighbors. The old women had a view of the metalworking machine, the enlarger and the developing tanks - Victor hid everything interesting in disassembled form under the shelves. Only the neighbor-hunter continued to believe that the owner was pouring shot in the barn at night.

Somehow, while creating a protective net, Baranov did not pay attention to the fact that the cliche was inverted. As a result, he discovered that in the place where the wave should have risen, there was a descent. Considering that no one would notice this, it was decided not to reject the batch. But in one of the banks, a sharp-eyed cashier noticed the difference and raised the alarm.

« By the time of my arrest, all my equipment had been dismantled,- he says. — I was going to drive through ponds and lakes and scatter it there in parts. I didn’t throw it away only because it’s April and it’s muddy and you can’t get through it. And thank God. Otherwise, divers would have to look for these parts at the bottom of reservoirs».

From the Stavropol pre-trial detention center, Baranov was transported to Moscow, to Butyrka. Every day he was visited by specialists, to whom he told about his research during twelve investigative experiments.

The Goznak technologist wrote in his conclusion: “ The counterfeit banknotes in denominations of 25 and 50 rubles made by V.I. Baranov are superficially close to genuine banknotes and are difficult to identify in circulation. That is why this counterfeit was very dangerous and could cause distrust of the population in genuine banknotes».

Viktor Ivanovich willingly shared his work. For the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, Baranov outlined recommendations on ten pages to improve the protection of rubles from counterfeiting. His sentence by firing squad was replaced with a colony, and he was given three years less than the maximum sentence.

Baranov served his sentence in a special regime colony in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region. He showed his talents there too: “ I wrote to the newspaper. I once won a competition for the best article on all ITK. Then they sent me a bonus - 10 rubles. And I was a director - I headed amateur performances. We had a choir of more than three hundred people, they took first place for seven years in a row».

Returning to Stavropol after imprisonment in 1990, Baranov again began to invent. " The meaning of human life is creative work. What was given to me, I realized, even if I had to endure a lot of suffering and serve».

He still had no friends; his first wife divorced him in the ninth year of imprisonment. At the Analogue plant, where he soon got a job, Baranov proposed a new method for growing nickel mesh in batteries. " They told me then: “Who are you? Experts from Germany came here, but they didn’t come up with anything new!” And I promised them that they would supply me with more cognac. And so it happened».

Then Baranov opened the Franza company to produce perfumes. I made six barrels of perfume, 200 liters each. But a few years later the company closed, unable to withstand the competition with the wave of cheap foreign perfumes. " Their boxes were beautiful, but inside was bullshit».

Baranov invented a method for cleaning potatoes from soil, stones and other inclusions. The ingenious solution is to pour everything into a container filled with salt water. The potatoes will float, the rest will sink to the bottom. I wanted to patent my invention, but was refused because I filled out the form incorrectly...

This was followed by a series of new inventions: ceramic car paint, resistant to acids and alkalis, furniture made from paper waste, water-based furniture varnish, adhesive paste, lightweight brick, healing balm. Some of the inventions were successfully implemented. At the request of a Moscow company, Viktor Ivanovich developed his own trade protection system, which is much more effective than barcodes.

Baranov never had any thoughts about going abroad. He doesn't particularly value money. He needs them only to invent something new. He says that he will never give away the technology for making “Baranovsky” banknotes to anyone.
See also:

This man is still rightly considered consummate master for the production of counterfeit banknotes. At one time, his criminal talent literally shocked Goznak specialists, party and police chiefs of the USSR. Today Viktor Baranov huddles in a room in an ordinary dorm with his wife and little son. And after 11 years of imprisonment, he continues to bring his unexpected inventions into reality, but now exclusively law-abiding ones. April 12, 1977. Cherkessk. Kolkhoz market. The Adyghe salesman had just told the police how a few minutes ago a buyer had approached him with a request to exchange twenty-five-ruble notes. Traders were asked to pay attention if someone offered quarter or fifty dollars on the market? So he converted. Yes, of course, he will show the buyer. This is the one with the briefcase. The documents of the suspicious buyer turned out to be in order: Viktor Ivanovich Baranov, a resident of Stavropol. But the police couldn’t even dream of how he ended up with cash in order. Viktor Ivanovich had 1,925 rubles in quarter notes in his briefcase. These 77 banknotes became for Baranov what 33 irons were for Professor Pleischner - a sign of failure. - So who are you? - the investigator asked him when the police brought the owner of the suspicious money to the police station. “I am a counterfeiter,” answered the king of counterfeiters. From the point of view of law enforcement agencies, this story began in the mid-70s. By 1977, in 76 regions of the USSR, from Vilnius to Tashkent, 46 counterfeit banknotes of the fifty-ruble denomination and 415 of the twenty-five-ruble denomination were identified, which, according to experts, had a single source of origin. The exceptionally high quality of the counterfeits made counterintelligence suspect the CIA, which, of course, could easily print rubles in a factory way in the USA and then distribute them through agents to the USSR. Along with the spy version, the traditional version was also checked - it was assumed that the counterfeiters received technology directly from Goznak. More than five hundred employees of the enterprise were under round-the-clock surveillance by the KGB for almost a year, until a repeated examination established that Goznak had nothing to do with it - just someone in the country was too well versed in the process of printing money. Counterintelligence regretfully abandoned the idea of ​​finding American sowers scattering banknotes in the USSR, and the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs focused on searching for a group of counterfeiters within the country. Gradually, it was possible to determine that in the south of Russia, high-quality counterfeits appear more often than in other regions. Then the circle of searches narrowed to the Stavropol region, where in three months of 1977 86 counterfeit twenty-five-ruble bills were immediately identified. And finally, thanks to the vigilance of the Adyghe seller, the first, as the security forces believed, member of the criminal group was captured. It must be said that at the time of his arrest Baranov was... a freelance employee of the Stavropol OBKhSS. As a driver, Viktor Ivanovich took two security officers on raids to all sorts of “grain places” - senior lieutenant Alexander Nikolchenko and major Yuri Baranov (namesake). And it had to happen that at the time of the arrest the senior leader was in Pyatigorsk, where he was just catching the notorious elusive counterfeiter! I found out that he was caught in Cherkessk, and received an order to deliver the captured man to Stavropol. Imagine the opera’s amazement when he saw his partner in front of him!.. “I knew that Yura and Sasha were looking for me, but I never asked them a question... I would never use our friendly relations to my advantage.” , admits Baranov. “I decided for myself a long time ago,” says Baranov, “if they catch me, I won’t twist and turn. I never lied to the police." The police did not know about this then, however, and considered Viktor Ivanovich a courier for counterfeiters, who decided to take all the blame on himself in order to shield his accomplices. Because one person cannot produce counterfeit money of such impeccable quality!

“I was taken to Stavropol as a general,” recalls Baranov. “There were two traffic police cars with flashing lights ahead.” There he immediately led the police to his barn, where a search revealed a compact printing press, stacks of printed money and five notebooks describing many years of research. On the same day, a report was placed on the desk of Minister of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, and the very next morning a group of Moscow experts flew to Stavropol. During the investigative experiment, Viktor Ivanovich, in front of distinguished guests, created watermarks on paper, rolled letterpress and intaglio seals, cut the sheet and applied the treasury number with a numberer. By the end of the performance, there were no longer any skeptics left in the room. Everyone believed in a miracle and that the wizard needed to serve a decent amount of time. After which, by decision of the Main Investigation Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, a hundred more similar cases were added to criminal case No. 193 on the discovery of counterfeit banknotes of twenty-five rubles in denomination, where it all began. In the USSR people were also sentenced to death for lesser crimes. Vitya Baranov developed an interest in money as a child, when he began collecting a collection of old banknotes. But he came to the conclusion that he could make money himself much later... In Stavropol, where the future criminal genius studied at a regular school, he was always in good standing with the teachers. Until the fifth grade, Vitya Baranov was an excellent student, and his behavior was always exemplary. Among his favorite school subjects was drawing... The guy went to art school, painted beautiful sunsets... And the best thing he made were copies of famous paintings - “Alyonushka” by Vasnetsov, “Morning in a Pine Forest” by Shishkin and others. After seventh grade, Vitya Baranov went to Rostov-on-Don to study at a construction school. Within a year, he mastered the specialty of a parquet carpenter. He also really wanted to become a pilot. My friend and I gathered a large group of the same guys at the flying club and started parachuting. Victor made several jumps. At the draft board, he was told that he needed to commit two more, and he would be drafted into the airborne troops. But, heeding his mother’s lamentations, Baranov completed a driver’s course at DOSAAF and went to serve in a motor battalion. Moreover, he was the secretary of the Komsomol organization of his unit. After the army, Victor worked at one time as a freight forwarder in the Stavropol regional party committee. And twice he even drove Mikhail Gorbachev home from work at night - at that time the third secretary of the Komsomol committee. - When I started making money, I was one hundred percent sure that nothing would work out. But it was interesting to test my capabilities,” recalls Stavropol “Kulibin”.

He worked on the banknotes for 12 years. During this time, I thoroughly studied as many as 12 printing specialties - from engraver to printer. For three years he “invented” the watermark himself, and for two years he “invented” intaglio printing ink. He studied textbooks for printing students, even went to Moscow, studied rare books “in his specialty” at Leninka... He had to do a lot by trial and error. The inventor locked himself in his barn on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street in Stavropol and worked literally day and night. The fruits of this work can be seen today in the Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A whole room is occupied by Baranov’s “exhibition”, which was transported to Moscow in no less than two KamAZ trucks! The forgery genius is especially proud of the solution he invented for removing copper oxides during etching. All printers in the world have been struggling with this problem for a long time. Terribly labor-intensive and painstaking work! And Baranov built a reagent from four components - two poison copper, two remove its oxides. Everything takes a minute or two... Goznak worked for 14 years on this etching agent, which received the secret name - “Baranovsky”. The first banknote that Baranov made was a fifty-ruble note. One to one with the original in the smallest details. The only thing, out of respect for Lenin, the counterfeiter made the leader twenty years younger. And this was not noticed in any bank! He released only a few fifty kopecks - 70 pieces. Caucasians in the markets grabbed them with their hands and asked for more. But the Stavropol resident decided to make the “quarter” - the most secure of Soviet banknotes. “If the ruble were the most difficult thing, I would do it... I wasn’t interested in money as such,” laughs Viktor Ivanovich.

Even the police admit that Baranov used his money machine very modestly. The only serious acquisition in all these years was a car. And then, according to Viktor Ivanovich, the entire amount was paid to him from honest labor savings. “I didn’t go to restaurants, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t have girls. And there was no TV, there was only a small refrigerator. I didn’t need to - I was doing work.” All the money was spent on the production of new equipment. He did not give counterfeit bills to his family. “My wife once asked where the money came from,” Baranov recalls. - I said that I offer my inventions to factories. I didn’t give my wife a lot of money - 25, 30, 50 rubles.” In parallel with his study of coinage, Baranov observed the behavior of sellers in the markets in order to understand how money “moves.” For example, fishmongers always take banknotes with wet hands, and meatmongers often have blood on their hands. Caucasians willingly accept new crisp banknotes. As a result, Baranov added 70 fifty dollars, after which he decided to give up on them. Tired of candy wrappers. However, Baranov immediately lost interest in the money he made. He was not interested in wealth - he simply needed funds to implement other bold projects. He calculated that this would require about 30 thousand rubles. No sooner said than done! But the trouble was when Baranov took him to Crimea to change his money, bought two kilograms of tomatoes from an old woman, walked away and only a few minutes later realized that he didn’t have a suitcase with him. He returned, and the old woman was like that, taking with her money for a good home... The bungling inventor had to turn on the printing press again, which he was about to disassemble and scatter in parts into different ponds. Baranov did not even think about counterfeiting the currency. But during one of his trips to the capital, he bought a dollar from a dealer - for his collection. Having looked at it more closely, I was convinced how easy it was to make money... Baranov had no friends, because friends like to visit without knocking. He regularly organized “open days” for suspicious neighbors. Curious old women who looked into the workshop had a view of the metalworking machine, the enlarger and the developing tanks - Baranov hid all the most interesting things in disassembled form under the shelves. Only a suspicious neighbor-hunter continued to believe that Baranov was pouring shot in the barn at night.

It was when creating a new batch of quarter notes that the maestro made a fatal mistake. While securing the cliche to create a protective net, Baranov did not pay attention to the fact that the cliche was upside down. As a result, after printing the money, he discovered that in the place where the wave should have risen, there was a descent. Considering that no one would notice this, he decided not to reject the batch. However, in one of the banks where such a bill eventually ended up, an eagle-eyed cashier noticed the difference and raised the alarm. From that moment on, as they say in thrillers, Baranov had only a few months left to live in freedom. “By the time of my arrest, all my equipment had been dismantled,” he says. - I was going to drive through ponds and lakes and scatter it there in parts. I didn’t throw it away only because it’s April and it’s muddy and you can’t get through it. And thank God. Otherwise, divers would have to look for these parts at the bottom of reservoirs.” From the Stavropol pre-trial detention center, Baranov was transported to Moscow, to Butyrka. Every day he was visited by specialists, to whom, over the course of twelve investigative experiments, he demonstrated the victory of the human mind over Goznak. The Goznak technologist wrote in his conclusion: “The counterfeit banknotes of 25 and 50 rubles produced by V.I. Baranov are externally close to genuine banknotes and are difficult to identify in circulation. That is why this counterfeit was very dangerous and could cause distrust of the population in genuine banknotes.” Viktor Ivanovich willingly shared his work. He hid for twelve years, and finally people appeared who were able to appreciate his talent and titanic work. The king of counterfeiters happily gave out the recipe for his solution, which etched copper several times faster than it was done in Goznak (under the name “Baranovsky solvent” it was used in production for the next 15 years). For the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shchelokov, Baranov outlined recommendations on ten pages for improving the protection of rubles from counterfeiting... Viktor Ivanovich probably told the competent authorities a lot of other useful things, considering that the execution sentence was replaced with a colony, and he was given three years less than the maximum sentence . “I printed little money,” Baranov offers his explanation of the court’s humanity. - Otherwise they would have shot you. But you know what I’ll tell you: it would be better if they shot him. I wouldn’t suffer for eleven years, with my hands shaking from hunger, snow, wet feet and ten cars with concrete that need to be shoveled. Every day". In fact, Baranov printed a lot - about 30,000 rubles, but he put only a small fraction of this money into circulation, most of it remained in the barn.

Baranov served his sentence in a special regime colony in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region. Like a true passionary, he showed his talents there too: “I wrote for the newspaper. I once won a competition for the best article on all ITK. Then they sent me a bonus - 10 rubles. And I was a director - I headed amateur performances. We had more than three hundred people in the choir, and took first place for seven years in a row.” Baranov also made the scenery for his productions, be it the Maxim machine gun or the coat of arms of the USSR, blinking lights in time with the recited poems. In the “zone” Baranov enjoyed great authority. Contrary to local regulations, the prisoners did not give him a nickname, but called him respectfully by his first name and patronymic. Returning to Stavropol after imprisonment in 1990, Baranov again began to invent. “The meaning of a person’s life is creative work,” he believes, waving off 11 years of age. “What was given to me, I realized, even if I had to endure a lot of suffering and serve time.” He still had no friends, his first wife divorced him in the ninth year of imprisonment, all that was left was to invent. At the Analogue plant, where he soon got a job, Baranov proposed a new method for growing nickel mesh in batteries. “They told me then: “Who are you? Experts from Germany came here, but they didn’t come up with anything new!” And I promised them that they would supply me with more cognac. And so it happened.” Then Baranov opened the Franza company to produce perfumes. I made six barrels of perfume, 200 liters each. But a few years later the company closed, unable to withstand the competition with the wave of cheap foreign perfumes. “Their boxes were beautiful, but inside was bullshit.” Baranov invented a method for cleaning potatoes from soil, stones and other inclusions. The ingenious solution is to pour everything into a container filled with salt water. The potatoes will float, the rest will sink to the bottom. I wanted to patent my invention, but was refused - I filled out the form incorrectly... Then a series of new inventions followed: ceramic car paint, resistant to acids and alkalis, furniture made from paper waste, water-based furniture varnish, adhesive paste, lightweight brick, medicinal balm. Some of the inventions were successfully implemented, some received royalties... This is how Viktor Ivanovich lives today - in a hostel with his young wife and child. Modestly, but with the hope of recognition. And at the request of a Moscow company, Viktor Ivanovich developed his own trade protection system, which is much more effective than barcodes. Baranov lives with his wife and little son in a room in a simple Stavropol dorm. This is where he stores all his equipment. Baranov never had any thoughts about going abroad. So what if they value brains more highly? He doesn't particularly value money. He needs them only to invent something new. And he also says that he will never give away the technology for making “Baranovsky” banknotes to anyone. #counterfeiter #biographies

Baranov, Viktor Ivanovich

Victor Baranov
Birth name:	Victor Ivanovich Baranov
Type of activity:	invention, making counterfeit money
Date of birth:
Citizenship:	USSR Russia

Victor Ivanovich Baranov(1941, Stavropol Territory) - Soviet and Russian inventor, artist. In 1978, he was arrested for making counterfeit money and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was called "Counterfeiter No. 1".

Biography

As a child, Victor was fond of collecting antiques. banknotes. Colored pictures showing royalty fascinated him. He heard a lot about the fact that there are people who can make the same ones, but he did not imagine that one day he would be able to do something like this.

After the seventh grade, he went to Rostov-on-Don to study at a construction school.

More than once he offered his inventions to enterprises, but for the most part they remained unclaimed. Then Baranov, “for self-affirmation” and also to finance his own inventions, takes on making money.

He visited second-hand bookstores, but could not find all the books he needed there. Required literature he found it in the Lenin Library, where he read, took notes and studied books on printing and zincography. He even stole a few, which he recalls with regret: “I don’t relate to cheating people.”

At one time he worked as a journalist. Shortly before his arrest, Baranov worked as a driver in the Stavropol Regional Committee of the CPSU. More than once he had to transport important people, including the first secretary of the local regional committee, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Next to the inventor’s house there was a barn in which he equipped his “research laboratory.” Captivated by new ideas, Viktor Ivanovich did not leave there for days.

Notes

Links

• Criminal talent: the genius of forgery - Argumenty.ru ["AH-online", Dmitry NIZHEGORODOV], January 6, 2010

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Books

• Military topography in the service and combat activities of operational units. Textbook for cadets, Maslak Yuri Grigorievich, Baranov Andrey Richardovich, Yagodintsev Viktor Ivanovich. This textbook contains full course military topography in accordance with State standards for this discipline. The presentation of the subject is concise, comprehensive…