MOSCOW, August 14 (RAPSI) – A court in Russia’s Stavropol has sentenced two former officers of a penitentiary facility to 5 years behind bars each for taking a 282,000-ruble bribe from a prisoner, according to a statement released by the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The defendants, Victor Yermakov and Davil Pogosov, have been also banned from holding state and municipal posts for 3 years.

A court and investigators found that a deputy security chief of one of the regional correctional facilities Yermakov and a junior supervisory security inspector Pogosov received more than 282,000 rubles from an inmate between August and November 2017.

The money was given to them for buying cell phones and their transfer to the high security facility in order to further sell devices to other convicts, the statement reads.