Two men have been arrested in St. Petersburg after allegedly robbing a courier who was transporting more than three million rubles extorted from an elderly woman by telephone fraudsters.
Police in Russia's second-largest city detained the suspects, aged 22 and 24, along with the 38-year-old female courier herself, following the daylight attack on a major urban thoroughfare.
The regional headquarters of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that the incident took place on October 3. According to police, the courier approached authorities to report the mugging. She told investigators that an unknown man ran up to her during the afternoon on Grazhdansky Prospect, shoved her forcefully in the back, and snatched a bag of cash.
During her statement to police, the woman admitted that she had collected the stolen money from a pensioner the previous day.
Telephone fraud operations
The elderly victim had simultaneously contacted law enforcement to report that she had fallen prey to a sophisticated fraud scheme. Scammers had convinced the pensioner to hand over the large sum of cash, instructing her that the money needed to be given to a courier for the purpose of declaring it.
Financial fraud operations are a widespread issue targeting vulnerable and elderly citizens across Russia. Criminal syndicates frequently impersonate bank security officials, government investigators, or police officers to convince victims that their life savings are at risk. To bypass modern banking security protocols and avoid leaving a traceable digital footprint, these criminal groups heavily rely on a network of low-level couriers to physically collect cash directly from the victims.
Grazhdansky Prospect is a busy avenue located in the northern residential districts of St. Petersburg. The two men arrested for the subsequent robbery reside in Novoye Devyatkino, a densely populated commuter suburb situated just across the official city boundary in the neighbouring Leningrad region.
St. Petersburg police investigation
Authorities identified the two robbery suspects as natives of the North Caucasus, a region in the south of the Russian Federation. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, which serves as the country's national police force, oversees such major criminal investigations.
Following the arrests, law enforcement officials have formally opened two separate criminal cases covering both the physical robbery and the attempted fraud. The court has released the female courier under a formal obligation to appear, a standard legal restriction requiring her to attend all future investigative and court proceedings.
