Typical signs of theft in the field of charitable activities as an object of forensic investigation

The subject of the research is the patterns of the formation and forensic significance of material, ideal, and electronic-digital traces of thefts committed during the accumulation, distribution, and use of donations in the field of charitable activities. The aim of the work is to identify typical complexes of traces that allow for the reconstruction of the mechanism of preparation, commission, and concealment of such crimes, as well as to determine their evidentiary significance for investigation. The empirical base consists of the results of surveying 182 employees of investigative divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia from nine regions, materials from 37 criminal cases, 130 legally valid sentences, and 15 materials on refusals to initiate criminal cases. The content, mechanisms of formation, and forensic significance of material, ideal, and electronic-digital traces for establishing the circumstances of the crime are revealed. Based on an analysis of scientific approaches and investigative practices, an authorial classification of traces has been proposed, based on the mechanism of committing thefts, which includes complexes of traces of distortion of financial and accounting information, informational support for charitable activities, and unlawful disposal of donations. The methodological basis consists of provisions of forensic theory of trace formation, systematic and classificatory approaches, analysis of scientific sources, and generalization of investigative and judicial practices. In processing the data, methods such as comparison, generalization, grouping, and quantitative analysis of the prevalence of individual carriers of trace information were applied. The scientific novelty lies in the justification of the authorial classification of theft traces based on the mechanism of their commission: traces of distortion of financial and accounting information, traces of distortion of informational support for charitable activities, and traces of unlawful disposal of donations. A correlation has been established between the stages of criminal activity and the nature of trace information: preparation predominantly generates ideal and electronic-digital traces, the commission of theft generates material and digital traces, and concealment leads to the transformation, distortion, or destruction of carriers. The proposed classification can be used in planning initial investigative actions and determining directions for the search for evidentiary information. The article examines typical traces of thefts in the field of charitable activities from the perspective of forensic theory of trace formation. The relevance of studying the trace picture of thefts committed in the field of charitable activities is justified.