A fraudster who conned women from Nizhny Novgorod out of 1.3 million rubles was caught in Kazan.

      October 21, 2025, 13:36 — Incidents

      In Kazan, a 19-year-old resident of Bashkortostan was detained on suspicion of participating in a fraud scheme. The young man was caught by Nizhny Novgorod police with the support of colleagues from Tatarstan, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Nizhny Novgorod Region reported.

      In September 2025, an 89-year-old resident of Sarov contacted the police. A woman called her, introducing herself as an employee of a telecommunications company. Under the pretext of arranging discounted communication services, the pensioner was persuaded to recite her passport details. A few days later, another call came. This time a man claimed to be an employee of the military prosecutor’s office. He said that the woman had been deceived by scammers from the territory of Ukraine, and that her money supposedly needed to be "declared" to protect it from theft.

      The victim was offered to hand her savings to a "trusted person" in Arzamas. The password for the meeting was the word "nadezhda." The next day the elderly woman took a taxi—called and paid for by the fraudsters—arrived at the designated square and handed 500,650 rubles to a stranger in a beige coat. After that she returned home the same way.

      An 88-year-old pensioner from Arzamas was deceived in a similar way. The scammers, contacting the victim, told a similar story over the phone and convinced her to hand over 800,000 rubles to the same stranger using the same password.

      During the investigation, Sarov criminal investigators and operatives from the Nizhny Novgorod Region identified the suspect. On September 16 he was detained in Kazan. During a personal search, 1,320,000 rubles were found on him.

      In interrogation, the young man admitted that he had found the "job" in a Telegram channel. He was sent addresses where money needed to be picked up and delivered to a "curator." For this he received a percentage of the amount.

      It turned out that the woman who personally collected money from the elderly victims was also deceived. She believed she was helping the police catch criminals.

      Criminal cases of fraud have been opened in both incidents. The court, at the request of the investigation, remanded the detainee in custody. The seized money has been sent for examination, after which it will be returned to the owners.

      Operatives are now checking whether the detainee is connected to other similar crimes in different regions of the country. For such actions he faces up to six years in prison.

      Earlier it was reported that the Nizhny Novgorod police helped dismantle a criminal network of traffic-routing terminals.

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