The fog hung heavy over the city as the gavel fell with a final, thundering crash in the Kuzminsky district court this August 8th. Two men, who once dreamt of conquering the skies with their mechanical birds, found themselves suddenly grounded—not by a failure of engines, but by the heavy hand of the law.

Vyacheslav Barbasov, the reigning chief of 'Drone Solutions,' and his predecessor, one Irakli Khazalia, were hauled before the bench like common footpads. The charge? Fraud of a most prodigious scale. The court’s ledger speaks of a crime so vast it threatens to bury them beneath ten long years of penal servitude.

These fellows were no mere street urchins; they operated a grand establishment since February of 2018, dealing in the arcane sciences of technical development and the weaving of 'neural networks'—invisible webs of thought for their flying contraptions. Their machines, they claimed, could brave any tempest or frost, spying upon oil pipes and leaping over fires to guard the perimeter of great estates.

Barbasov held the lion's share of the venture, nearly forty percent, while the NTI Project Support Fund and the minority Khazalia clung to the rest. But alas, their 'luck'—their sudden fort—has run dry. Instead of the humming of motors, they shall now hear only the clink of the jailer's keys and the heavy tread of the beadle in the corridor. The high-flyers have plummeted, and the cold stone of the cell awaits them.