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A group of scammers, including one who passed himself off as UFC heavyweight Aleksei Oleinik, have been detained by law enforcement officers in Russia.
Three men were detained for using a variety of messaging apps including WhatsApp and Telegram to scam unsuspecting victims during the coronavirus pandemic. Among the victims are Russia’s famed circus owner Edgard Zapashny.
According to Russian Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk, the fraudsters would contact famous people, masquerade as one of their friends, before requesting them to urgently transfer funds for medical emergencies.
“As a result of operational search measures, the Moscow Criminal Investigation Officers located the suspects and detained three men in the cities of St. Petersburg and Vladikavkaz,” Volk said, according to TASS. “There is reason to believe that the defendants may be involved in the commission of more than 30 such illegal acts. The preliminary damages exceed 4.5 million rubles ($60,000).”
The big cat owner was scammed out of 50,000 rubles (approx. $650) by someone who contacted him on WhatsApp pretending to be Oleinik. Zapashny, who took to social media to explain the incident, revealed that the scammer asked him to send money because his sister was in dire need of medical attention.
