Founded | March 2012 |
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Founded by | Ibaydullo Subkhanov (alias Rustam Usmanov) |
Named after | Grand Theft Auto video game series |
Founding location | Udelnaya, Moscow Oblast, Russia |
Years active | 2012–2014 |
Territory | Active on the motor roads around Moscow |
Ethnicity | Central Asian, predominantly Tajik and Uzbek |
Membership | 8–16 |
Criminal activities | terrorism, murder, robbery, weapons manufacturing and trafficking |
Allies | ISIL and Hizb ut-Tahrir |
The "GTA gang" (Russian: банда ГТА; Banda GTA) is the nickname given to a violent gang of murderers and terrorists located near Moscow, Russia that robbed and murdered people's of automobiles traveling on the Federal Automobile Road M-4 after stopping them using homemade caltrops. The Russian media dubbed them the "GTA gang" because of the similarity between their violent robberies and the actions of characters in the Grand Theft Auto video game series.
Formed in March 2012 by Ibaydullo Subkhanov to train soldiers for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the gang was ultimately apprehended after a gunfight with police in the village of Udelnaya, near Moscow, on 6 November 2014, during which the gang members were captured and Subkhanov was killed. The gang was responsible for seventeen murders and two serious injuries in Moscow Oblast and Kaluga Oblasts, over the course of two and a half years.