The Russian Art of the Con

Cheating and Russia have a long history together.

Sigizmund Herberstein, Austria’s ambassador to Moscow from 1517-1526, wrote in his “Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii” (“Notes on Moscow”) that “the people of Moscow are much more astute and cunning than all others and are especially treacherous when its comes to honoring commitments.” Herberstein also warned that Muscovites are well aware of their infamous reputation, so, when dealing with foreigners they often claim to come from other cities.

Another historical reference dates to 1892. An inconspicuous man was making the rounds of photo shops in an average  Russian city, buying unclaimed photos for just kopeks. Shops owners were happy to sell these otherwise unnecessary “archives,” yet wondered why the man wanted old photos of ordinary people.

But then, at the famous Nizhny Novgorod Fair held that same year, our hero resold the photos at a premium, after inscribing them with the names of world famous writers, artists and scientists: Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Thomas Edison and others. Nicely framed, these pictures made an impression. And it was a fairly safe con. After all, photography was still quite young, and who at that fair would know Thomas Edison by sight?

The story is not that far removed from the purchase of dead souls in Gogol’s novel of the same name. And then there is Gogol’s other great story, The Inspector General, a classic case of mistaken identity and a perfect con. Reportedly, it was based on a story which Alexander Pushkin heard in the provinces and then “gave” to Gogol to “fictionalize.”

In the Soviet era, there was no greater con man than the protagonist of Ilf & Petrov’s novels, Ostap Bender, who likely had many “doubles” in real life, particularly in the heady days of NEP. Bender claimed to know 400 “relatively honest” ways of earning money. In The Twelve Chairs he sold tickets to a famous proval (canyon), when in fact the sightseeing was free. In The Golden Calf, Bender’s associates earned their daily bread by extorting money from different social security services by posing as “children of Lieutenant Schmidt,” a famous Russian revolutionary.

So it is that modern Russia has a very rich pedigree in cheating and cons. And the new era of robber-capitalism has proven to be fertile soil for new, more intricate schemes. In fact, you might say there has been a renaissance in the local art of the con.

The lokhotron

There is today no more popular way of emptying someone’s wallet by fraudulent means than the so-called momentalnaya lotereya —“instant lottery.” The key is to find the right person for the role of zazyvala—the barker who mingles with the crowd, calling out to passersby to “take a chance.” As a rule, zazyvalas are excellent amateur psychologists who can easily pick from the crowd a potential victim, stick a lottery ticket in their hand and draw them to the table where sits the main lokhotronschik (lottery con artist — the word derives from the combination “lokh,” colloquial for a stupid, naive person and “lototron,” the lottery drum). The lokhotronschik is the most astute and agile crook. He looks-up the lokh’s lottery number and announces he has won a big sum of money or some expensive type of consumer electronics.

But this is right when the noose tightens. At this moment another lucky winner—yet another member of the con team—comes to the table with the same winning numbers. So, rather than have the two split the prize, the lokhotronschik offers a competition: whoever is willing to pay more in cash gets the prize.

When the lokh runs out of cash, some of his “fans” (still more con team members) offer to lend him some money, asking for a written receipt or a passport as collateral. Needless to say, the lokh’s opponent never runs out of cash, so the poor man from the crowd, when he “wins” his prize, walks away with a prize of questionable value and a mountain of  debt.

To catch one such gang, operatives from the Moscow Criminal Brigade videotaped the con team with a hidden camera then sent in a plant—an elderly woman who acted the part of the naïve victim. At the moment when the cash changed hands, the criminals were rounded up. The con team consisted of 16 people, including a counter-surveillance squad and bodyguards. They could easily afford this staff; their daily take often exceeded $10,000. Their victims included average Muscovites, a well-known playwright who shelled out R54,000 in cash (almost $2,000), a pop star, a human rights activist, several foreigners and the wife of a major militia boss.

Hold on to your barsetka

Barsetochniki are criminals who steal your barsetka—colloquial for a leather handbag in which one carries documents and money. Their classic scheme is to stop on the left side of a car at a stoplight and ask a driver for some directions. While the trusting, helpful driver leans out the driver’s side window to help, an accomplice reaches through the passenger side window and steals the driver’s barsetka. Then the “lost” driver floors it and his accomplice runs away with the bag, so even if the victim comes to his senses, he does not know who to pursue.

In Moscow, the barsetochny business is reportedly controlled mostly by Georgian criminal gangs. As the Russian press reported, one such thief-in-law was Nugzar Torchinava, who was caught by Russian law enforcement in a complex sting operation. All in all, some thirty brigades of barsetochniki are estimated to be operating in Moscow at any one time. One such team in the Southwest district of the capital even used prestigious cars like Porsches or Audis to pull up alongside their unsuspecting victims—after all, who would suspect they would be robbed by someone who was already quite rich?

Topical cheating

The con artists’ imagination knows no bounds. Fiction, as the saying goes, could never be as interesting as real life, and in real life there is no end to the cons an enterprising crook can dream up.

For example, one resident of the capital reported the following case to the militia. After stopping to use one of the new bio-toilets sprouting around the capital in answer to the deficit of public facilities, he found that the door had become locked from the outside. After struggling for a bit, he heard a gravely voice from the other side of the door: “Pass me a R100 note and I’ll open the door.” Woe to the victim who did not have spare cash. And don’t even try to chase down your “jailer” in this case—he travels about with a “troika” of well-built colleagues.

Or take the upcoming population census. It is set for October 2002, yet fake “census workers” are already doing a door-to-door business. The scheme is quite simple. Two nicely-dressed criminals show up after everyone has left for work and only babushka is home minding the apartment. They show a nicely printed identification, then unfold a huge questionnaire with lots of spaces to fill in, and begin asking the babushka all sorts of distracting questions about her family. Then one of the guests pretends he has forgotten something and politely slips away, only to let in a pair of other accomplices to raid the apartment (through experience, they know where to look for jewelry and cash) while the babushka is in another room sharing her data about the number of her family members, their income, etc.

Forty-something Muscovite Sergei Larikov was a whiz at helping foreigners get legal registration in Moscow. He didn’t raise any suspicions, because his fees were never more than the official for such services allowed by the authorities—about $1 per day. Larikov recruited new clients, mostly black Africans, in public places. He would approach the lokh, establish a rapport and start talking enthusiastically about “his love for Africa.” Then, as the victim was warming up to him, Larikov offered his mediation services in securing registration. As it turned out, all his stamps were fake. And, when operatives finally caught up with Larikov, they found the task of proving his guilt to be greatly eased: posted in Larikov’s apartment was a hand-drawn poster of him playing the piano before an “audience” of his victims—a “tree of lokhs”featuring black and white photos of all his victims, copies of the same photos he had taken for their “registration.”

Another popular scheme hinges on the common practice of leasing apartments “on the black”—i.e. without legally informing the tax inspectorate (as the law requires). Many expats, students, and businesspeople rent apartments this way, usually finding such deals by word of mouth, without going through expensive real estate agencies. Strangely, such tax-evading landlords are not afraid to post their phone numbers in newspaper ads, on walls or elsewhere. Russians are ready to pay money to anyone, it seems, as long as they don’t have to deal with the tax authorities. One crook cheated dozens of Muscovites, threatening to rat them out to the tax inspectorate. Without exception, the tax-evading landlords believed him and paid out hush money.

Then the con artist got organized. He procured a real estate agency’s list of prospective landlords. He then called each landlord and pretended he was shopping for an apartment to rent, in the process finding out the landlord’s name, address and the monthly rent. He then waited a few days or weeks for the landlord to rent out the apartment, then mailed him an official-looking notice from the so-called “Independent Information Service of Apartment Rental.” The notice informed the landlord that the agency was “aware of his income tax evasion,” and, in order to avoid troubles, the landlord was told to wire 2% of the “intentionally hidden income” to a stated bank account. It was hard for the victim not to believe the letter was real. After all, it stated the exact rent with scary accuracy.

Half Money Back Guarantee

With the new freedom of travel abroad, many local con artists have sought to take advantage of fellow Russians who are distracted by a desire to live abroad in a new “PMZH” (acronym for “Postoyannoye Mesto Zhitelstva”—Permanent Place of Residence). And they do so under the cover of seemingly legitimate business.

One company advertised that it worked “in close contact with” Canadian immigration authorities. Lokhs would show up at an interview and take a test. Based on the results of this test, the company, not surprisingly, issues a verdict that the candidate is “fit for emigration.” So the firm offers its intermediary services: processing documents, delivery of same to the immigration service, payment for international calls and faxes, hotel reservations, etc., for $4,000, “plus $800 to settle issues with the embassy.”

What is more, to make the offer sound business-like, the firm promises the client a 50% refund “if something doesn’t work out.” The client is already confident it will work out (after all, he passed the test), but typically it doesn’t, if only because the client’s profession is not in demand in Canada. If the firm had familiarized the applicant with Canada’s list of desired professions, he would have seen that his chances were not very good. But then the firm would not have gotten its advance fee. So it engages in a con and takes the lokh for $2,800.

Dying for Dollars

Speaking of dollars, the days when greenbacks were accepted at restaurants or bars has passed. The only place dollars might be accepted now is at souvenir markets or some wholesale or food markets. Vendors may say they gladly accept dollars but then ask to see the money first, “to check whether it is real.” This is usually a scam and one should never hand over money like this without getting the goods first. Even so, quite often such a vendor will go away and come back to announce that the dollars are fake. In order to avoid problems with the militia, the buyer is all of a sudden ready to make a concession.

Of course, one should never exchange dollars “s ruk” (hand-to-hand), only at official exchange points. Here the fraudulent scheme is based on a similar principle: the scam artist takes a $100 note, say, to check if it is real. He holds it in the air and seems to examine it expertly. But then for some reason he folds the note in quarters and gives it back to you, saying, “Sorry, I can’t take it,” because either “it is too old,” “has too much graffiti on it” or “is fake.” Indignant, the poor lokh unfolds the note to find out that Franklin is now Washington and the money changer has disappeared into the crowd.

Off-the-beaten path

Far from all con artists use standard schemes. For sooner or later the rent trick or even the dollar slight of hand becomes widely-known. The top con artists work out elaborate, multi-move schemes which are rarely repeated. Militia archives abound in tales of such cons—schemes that would make Ostap Bender proud.

One well-off man had his car stolen, yet the very next day the car was parked back in its proper place in the courtyard. The car owner then found a note on the passenger seat: “Borrowed the car to transport a sick patient. Sorry. Thanks much.” An accompanying envelope contained $200 in cash plus two tickets to the opera. “How noble and generous of them,” the well-off man thought to himself. So he took his wife to the opera, confident that all is right with the world. Of course, that is just what the “noble” robbers were expecting: back from the opera, the well-off man found that his apartment had  been looted while he was out.

In general these mnogokhodovki (“multi-move schemes”) are successful because they prey on human nature—most of us are not suspicious of those who appear to be upstanding and polite. And the best multi-move cons begin by earning the lokh’s trust.

A Russian man put an ad in the paper to sell his dog. He opened the door to a prospective buyer who introduced himself as a doctor, then proved a true connoisseur of dogs, establishing an excellent rapport with the dog’s owner. “OK, it’s a deal, I’ll buy it,” the doctor said, and then left. But then, just ten minutes later, he was back: “You know, I got stopped by the GAI (road militia), and I don’t have the technical passport for my car. I am just back from a 24-hour shift at the polyclinic and have no cash on me. Could you possibly lend me some money—enough to bribe the arrogant GAI? I’ll give it back when I come to buy the dog.” Of course, the dog owner, anticipating the lucrative deal and knowing all to well about the GAI, gladly gives the “doctor” a thousand rubles ($30). Needless to say, the dog lover never returns.

It is also easy to urge a mark to action if you dangle in front of him the prospect of a quick, effortless windfall. There was the case of a young “musician” who came to a pawn shop and was truly hooked by a pair of Zeiss binoculars on offer. He could not put them down and spoke as a true connoisseur of optics. He just had to have the binoculars, but did not have the money with him at the time, so he offered his violin as a security deposit, to keep the binoculars from being sold while he goes to get his cash.

A little while later, another intellectual type stopped into the store. His jaw dropped at the sight of the violin the musician left as a security. He mumbled something about the violin “being a unique rarity made by a famous Italian master,” and offered $10,000 for the violin. The astonished shop owner readily agreed, then the violin expert ran off “to get together the right sum of money.”

When the binocular lover returned to the store, the owner implored him to sell the violin for $5,000. The young man was at first outraged by an “offer insulting for a true musician,” but then cooled down and reluctantly agreed to part with the violin for $5000. Needless to say, the violin was only worth a few hundred rubles and the violin expert never returned—he was off celebrating with his binocular-loving friend.

Such naïveté by a store owner is forgivable, for even professionally trained employees of the Custom Service can be turned into lokhs. It happened when a local Customs Office received an anonymous call: “At approximately 3 pm, a man with his hand in a cast will be leaving through Customs. There is contraband under the cast.” Not very imaginative, the customs officials think—in fact it’s just like in Leonid Gaiday’s famous comedy film, Diamond Arm.

The operatives have of course seen the film dozens of times, but who knows: after all, it is their duty to check on every tip. So they hold up the suspect, break his plaster cast, only to find zero contraband. Of course, the passenger is outraged and threatens to sue Customs after he is back from his trip abroad in a week. On his way back, the Customs officers, wary of a lawsuit, meet the victims of their “harassment” with open arms and—God forbid!—make a point not to touch his cast. Which, obviously, was now hiding contraband from abroad.   RL

Nikolai Poroskov is correspondent with the Vek weekly, covering military problems and the work of Russian law-enforcement bodies.