Russian police say they are investigating an online community that urges members to post selfies with dead people and offers cash prizes for the photographs.
A police spokesman in the northern Russian city of Syktyvkar said their investigation targets a group that calls itself Selfie With The Dead on the Russian social networking site VKontakte.
The group’s administrators pledge to pay between 1,000 and 5,000 rubles ($15-$76) for the best selfie with a corpse.
The group’s page is filled with photographs of people posing and smiling alongside dead bodies at funeral homes.
The profile of the community’s main administrator, named as Alfred Polyakov, has been blocked for “suspicious activity.”
Polyakov described himself to AFP as a 28-year-old university professor from Donetsk -- the separatist-controlled city in eastern Ukraine.
He said he created the group in July “to change popular attitudes toward death.”