Forty-five years after the world watched Audrey Hepburn in “How to steal a million”, some Russian adventurers almost managed to steal not a million, but a billion – in a similar “clever” way.
The crime was almost perfect. The pension fund targeted had no idea where the money had gone until a suspect was detained.
As it turned out, the fraudster had basically called the Central Bank of Russia and said that the computer network at the pension fund was down, so they would send a delivery man with a receipt for the money transaction.
The fraudster showed up with the fake receipts at the bank and had this money transacted. The operation was carried out at Friday evening, so that the funds could fly away to the off-shore zones over the weekend.
On Monday, however, the pension fund received the notification and no money, so they managed to cancel the transaction and get all the funds back.
The scheme was set up by six people: three of them were caught immediately; another was the executive of a senior Russian bank who turned himself in after the crime was busted with the help of CCTV cameras.
Pensioner outsmarts phone fraudsters
Meanwhile, a pensioner from the city of Orenburg has put an end to a series of phone frauds – himself.
The 72-year-old received a call from a stranger pretending to be his son. The man said he had been in a drink-driving accident and needed 20,000 roubles ($600) to pay his way out of trouble.
The pensioner then called his real son and found out he was fine. The two pretended to believe the fraudsters and detained them when they came for the money.
It turns out the detained girls were hired by a convict at a local prison and this was not their first phone fraud. The convict has pleaded guilty to orchestrating the scam.