He stole some from the library's closed fund, only choosing the most valuable: the altar gospel and a number of books on hymns, ancient Russian paintings and icons.
Skoptsov became heavily sought after in the criminal world, due to his impressive printmaking skills - the making of seals and stamps, and, by extension, falsification of documents.
On the night of February 24, 1989, in the town of Obol, Vitebsk Region, Skoptsov and Turaev broke into the state farm cash desk: they cracked open the safe with the help of a thermal lance, in which they found 168 Rbls 32 kop.
In October 1990, he carjacked a car from a garage cooperative in Veliky Novgorod and, after changing the license plates and forging the documents, sold it.
His places of residence, along with the areas he committed crimes, constantly changed, moving mainly between the Northwestern and Central parts of Russia.
By the time the authorities discovered a warehouse worth of fake documents and a unique musical instrument/firearm hybrid made from an ordinary squeezebox, Valery was very far ahead of them.
After that, Valery moved to the Oryol Oblast, and at the Lesnaya Polyana recreation centre, he got himself acquainted with Mikhail Karpukhin, an alcoholic watchman who also had a part-time job as an entertainer.
On the night of 3 August 1995, Skoptsov and Karpukhin committed a double murder along the 24th kilometre of the Oryol-Bryansk highway, taking with them a VAZ-2105 Zhigula and dumping the corpses in a nearby pond afterwards.
[1] Soon, Skoptsov made friends with a group of scammers led by Vladimir "San Sanych" Manuilov, who constantly was in need of fake documents.
Then Manuilov and his assistant Pogasyan, nicknamed "Ara", beat up Skoptsov, breaking his arm in the process, before tying him to a wheelchair and dousing him with gasoline.
After this, Skoptsov began feeling very ill, barely reaching the swamps on the outskirts of Bryansk before losing consciousness: likely a result of poor-quality vodka.
He got a job as a singing and drawing teacher at a local school, gaining high authority among staff and students alike.
Mikhail Karpukhin got 8 years at a corrective labour colony, while Sergei Sharipov died of tuberculosis at the Oryol detention centre.
He was sent to serve his sentence at the Black Dolphin Prison, where his main occupation was poetry:[1] There is even no earth, no sky, Like God's free slaves, We get here a ration of bread".