Scammers dupe victim into transferring his £17,000 savings and FIRE-BOMBING his bank with a Molotov cocktail
- 48-year-old Russian man from Moscow region was arrested for property damage
- Employees of the Sberbank branch in Russian capital managed to put out the fire
- READ MORE: Man ‘hurls a burning Molotov cocktail at the Kremlin walls’
Scammers duped a victim into transferring his £17,000 savings and fire-bombing his bank with a Molotov cocktail.
A 48-year-old Russian man from Ruza, a town in the Moscow region of Russia, was arrested a few days ago after allegedly being tricked into throwing a Molotov cocktail in a Sberbank branch in the Russian capital, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports.
Bank employees managed to put out the resulting flames before the fire service arrived at the scene. Police quickly identified the man and detained him.
Once detained, the man whose name wasn’t disclosed for privacy reasons, told police that he had been contacted by someone a while ago who introduced themselves as a ‘representative of Russia’s largest bank’ and began telling him that the man’s account had been linked to suspicious activity.
The ‘bank representative’ convinced the 48-year-old that scammers were trying to steal his funds and that the best way to keep them safe would be to transfer them to ‘secure’ accounts overseen by bank employees.
A 48-year-old Russian man from Ruza, a town in the Moscow region of Russia, was arrested a few days ago after allegedly being tricked into throwing a Molotov cocktail in a Sberbank branch in the Russian capital (file image)
Over the following days after the initial contact, the man transferred all his savings – around 1 million rubles (£17,000) – into several accounts provided by the alleged Sberbank representative.
After already obtaining the scammed man’s money, the fraudsters went one step further in their fraud ploy.
They convinced the victim that the only way to expose the ‘scammers’ who were trying to steal the man’s money is to set fire to the Sberbank branch they operated from in Ruza.
They even gave the Russian detailed instructions telling him how to build a Molotov cocktail.
After following those instructions to build his own device and making sure no customers were inside the bank branch at the time, the man opened the door and threw the Molotov cocktail inside.
He wasn’t able to provide an answer to investigators how throwing the fire bomb into the bank was going to expose the scammers.
As unbelievable as his story sounded to investigators, it actually checked out, according to RIA Novosti.
The man will most likely be accused of property damage and potentially other crimes, while his chances of recovering his life savings are very slim.
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