The scheme by which four Russians frauduled the soldiers on the front with almost a million dollars
Russian military in the Kursk region. Photo: Rusian Defense Ministry Press Service / AP / Profimedia
The Russian police arrested four men accused of deceiving soldiers with wages and military bonuses they had to receive because participation in the Ukraine war, the Ministry of Interior, quoted by The Moscow Times on Friday.
Investigators suspect that over 40 people were deceived, the total losses probably exceeding 80 million rubles ($ 985,500).
The main concerned were men who were previously refused, including for medical reasons. Some of the victims of deception were killed while fighting in Ukraine, according to the authorities.
A resident of St. Petersburg and three men in the neighboring Pskov region are suspected of being behind the deceptions.
How the group was acting
According to investigators, after half of 2024, the members of the group were given as intermediaries with links in the military recruitment offices and promised to help recruits obtain contracts in exchange for a tax. Once recruited, the men were taken to St. Petersburg and enrolled in the army using forged documents.
The recruits were then trained to open bank accounts to receive the state money for military service. The police say that the group convinced the soldiers to hand over the bank cards and online banking information under the pretext of managing payments and deduction of the commissions. Fraud suspects then transferred payments to their own accounts.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, Irina Volk, said the police work to identify other victims of the scheme and to confiscate the goods of the group of fraudsters, in order to compensate the affected persons.
The four men involved in the scheme were placed in preventive arrest and risks up to 10 years in prison for fraud.
