Few realize how easy it is to impersonate another person. In fact, the essential thing is to look like your photo of the passport or identity card. The rest is a matter of choosing the dual. You must be a person of ordinary features, you are unmarried and that is just sociable.
Svetlana Sokolova, a forty-something from Odintsov, a satellite town of Moscow, was apparently an ideal candidate for someone to take over his personality. Lived alone since her husband was out years ago. She had no friends and her only son moved to Moscow with his wife. To assuage his loneliness, women spent days surfing the social networks in search of friends in cyberspace.
"Every time we visit, he saw to the computer. We spent hours glued to the screen and tells me a lot of contacts," said Anna Vlasova, Sokolova neighbor.
Fatal invitation
Everything was going well until one day invited her to speak a contemporary who introduced himself as an independent real estate agent. The two women soon found similarities of interests and circumstances. Both had betrayed a man she had lived more than 20 years. Both had an only son and the two were alone.
Several days later, the new girlfriend was in Sokolova's house. What most surprised the host that the guest is looked a lot like her. Yulia Pecheneva (name of alleged real estate agent) to imitate his style of dress and makeup. That day was the last to Sokolova.
"Pecheneva poisoned her new friend and hid the body on the terrace. He left the house with the passport of Sokolova and greeted neighbors who were found," Yulia Zhukov said , a prosecutor responsible for investigating the murder.
According to prosecutors, the real objective of the fake real estate agent were the apartments. Several years ago, Pecheneva devised a plan to appropriate apartments. Search the web for single women of age who seem to her. Then she went to the house with any excuse, killing the owner and selling the apartment using the passport of the victim.
"There were two cases in St. Petersburg and we have evidence that has been Pecheneva. She not only sold the apartments of its victims but also obtained loans using false identity," said Zhukov.
All have been professionals reincarnations of Pecheneva. She knew her victims to fund their long conversations through the internet. To replicate all the details requested photos. Neither the neighbors realized.
Unbelieving neighbors
No one had noticed the trick until she sold the Sokolova's apartment. She wanted to sign the contract with an interested buyer who she did not have time to remove the body of the terrace and the new owners found her. The new owners of the apartment to tell the police, who identified the dead as the former owner. "But it's impossible! A couple of hours left here alive and well," said the complainants.
"This type of crime is very difficult to detect. If the victim has no family or friends, no one protests. The three cases in which it is involved Pecheneva may be just the top of the iceberg," said Zhukov.
If the killer had hidden the body well, the sale of the flat would have happened as perfectly legal. "The son of the victim would have to show that no side was his mother who sold the apartment to the new owners," he said.
7.25.2009
7.21.2009
When a russian get angry ...
This happened earlier this year in Sverdlovsk region, near Yekaterinburg.
The truck driver had been penalized by the road police and was temporary deprived of the right to drive for some months. He was very angry for road policemen just because it was his job and being deprived of the drivers license meant loosing job for him. Still, he kept himself quite after this.
In revenge, he took his old KRAZ truck got a good deal of speed and smashed it against the local road police office.
The driver was arrested and kept in jail, where as being told he was feasted and honored as a real hero. He said later “The only thing I feel sorry for is that I didn’t went faster”.
7.15.2009
romance with a russian spy
The drama, danger and confusion of life in eastern Europe in the years up to and including the second world war is well reflected in the extraordinary experiences of John Murray, who has died aged 92. Born in Manchester, by the time he was 26 he had become a self-made millionaire as the owner of a Latvian tobacco factory, was then a spy in Moscow at the outbreak of war, before becoming one half of a remarkable cloak-and-dagger romance.
He was the son of a Greek immigrant father and a mother of Irish extraction. At 16, he took up the offer of a family friend in Riga to become a clerk at his tobacco factory. Following a dispute over the ownership of the factory in 1931, John took it over, built it up and within three years had become exceedingly rich. However, when, in 1937, the Latvian government nationalised the factory, he lost everything.
Undeterred, he started a successful import-export business in Finland. The Russian invasion of 1939 put a stop to this and John escaped to Norway, only to have to flee from there after the German occupation.
Back in Riga, now occupied by the Soviets, he was asked to join the British embassy in Moscow. However, before he could leave, the Russian secret police (NKVD) suspected there was more to John's role, accused him of being a German spy and threatened to kill him. For months he spent each night watching the front door, gun in hand. Finally, with the British anxious about his whereabouts, he was rescued by an envoy sent by the British ambassador, Sir Stafford Cripps.
It was in Moscow that this mild-mannered Englishman began a romance with a Russian spy called Nora Korzhenko. Blackmailed into becoming a mozhno - a "sex for secrets" spy - with the code name Swallow, her first assignment was John, whom the NKVD had correctly surmised was not merely a clerk, but involved in espionage work and an operator of the code-scrambler, Hush - the heart of the secret Allied communications in Russia.
Luckily for John, Nora was an unsophisticated spy. Rejected by him at every turn, she finally broke down and blurted out her story. Faced with the responsibility of sending her back to the NKVD empty-handed, John decided to adopt a high-risk strategy. He agreed to meet Nora regularly for "Russian lessons", where they concocted stories for her to relate to the NKVD. Nora's bosses finally discovered they were being duped and turned on her, revoking her citizenship. In desperation, she reached out to John. With loyalties now torn between his growing love for Nora and his role at the embassy, John was forced to make a near-impossible decision. He handed her the key to his flat at the British embassy. So long as she remained there she would be safe.
The Russians were furious. However, Sir Stafford Cripps gave Nora refugee status and she was permitted to stay. By now John and Nora were very much in love. But by 1941, the German army had almost reached Moscow. The British embassy was hastily evacuated and John ordered to the Arctic base of Archangel, leaving Nora behind. On arrival, he was shocked to find that, as a security risk, he was to be sent back to England. In despair, he phoned Nora to share the news.
With faked American documents, Nora escaped from a besieged Moscow, evaded NKVD agents in a 700-mile chase, and reached Archangel - only to discover that John's ship had already sailed, with him a prisoner. In fact, a raging blizzard had forced the ship to anchor a few miles up the coast. By now the temperature had dropped to minus 40C, yet Nora stumbled on through the night.
As in the best romances, John just happened to be on deck, and caught sight of a figure staggering towards the ship's jetty out of the snowy wastes. It was Nora. Once safely on board, John proposed.
But they still faced another hurdle: it was illegal for any Soviet citizen to leave the country and the captain was under strict orders to take John to Britain. He decided their only chance was to send a telegram to Stalin in the wild hope that he would take pity on them. But even as the message was being sent, Nora was kidnapped by the NKVD and hauled back to Moscow.
No one is quite sure why Stalin read John's telegram - even less why he responded. John believed it was because they appealed to the dictator's ego. More likely they were used by Stalin as a bargaining tool, to support his claim to his western allies that things in the Soviet Union were beginning to thaw.
Whatever the truth, John and Nora were allowed to leave the country in the spring of 1942, and John returned to England with his young Russian bride. The day after their departure, Stalin annulled the decree. Thus, Nora became the only Russian war-bride to escape the USSR during the second world war.
When they got back to England, life was not easy. John was ostracised by the British establishment after his experiences in Russia, although he always claimed he never once betrayed his country. He started a business with a revolutionary new printing process that would enable newspapers to be printed in colour. It was an idea years ahead of its time, but with insufficient capital, the business collapsed. The effort and disappointment nearly broke him.
Nora, meanwhile, had become something of a celebrity, as a result of her book I Spied for Stalin (1950). Under the weight of John's business failure and Nora's celebrity they finally separated in 1958, and John brought up his three sons alone.
In 1978, after studying history as a mature student in Nottingham, John wrote his story, A Spy Called Swallow. John loved Nora to the end, and in the last weeks of her life they were reconciled; he was with her when she died, in 1989. Their extraordinary relationship lives on, and is now the subject of a planned feature film.
In his last few years, John lived in a small council flat in north London. Only months before his death, he toured local secondary schools, recounting his story in a characteristically bravura performance. The children loved it. To those who knew him, he will be remembered not just for his exploits but for his honesty, gentleness and courage.
He is survived by two sons, Peter and Leeroy; a third son, John, predeceased him.
• John Murray, businessman and spy, born January 7 1908; died October 5 2000
He was the son of a Greek immigrant father and a mother of Irish extraction. At 16, he took up the offer of a family friend in Riga to become a clerk at his tobacco factory. Following a dispute over the ownership of the factory in 1931, John took it over, built it up and within three years had become exceedingly rich. However, when, in 1937, the Latvian government nationalised the factory, he lost everything.
Undeterred, he started a successful import-export business in Finland. The Russian invasion of 1939 put a stop to this and John escaped to Norway, only to have to flee from there after the German occupation.
Back in Riga, now occupied by the Soviets, he was asked to join the British embassy in Moscow. However, before he could leave, the Russian secret police (NKVD) suspected there was more to John's role, accused him of being a German spy and threatened to kill him. For months he spent each night watching the front door, gun in hand. Finally, with the British anxious about his whereabouts, he was rescued by an envoy sent by the British ambassador, Sir Stafford Cripps.
It was in Moscow that this mild-mannered Englishman began a romance with a Russian spy called Nora Korzhenko. Blackmailed into becoming a mozhno - a "sex for secrets" spy - with the code name Swallow, her first assignment was John, whom the NKVD had correctly surmised was not merely a clerk, but involved in espionage work and an operator of the code-scrambler, Hush - the heart of the secret Allied communications in Russia.
Luckily for John, Nora was an unsophisticated spy. Rejected by him at every turn, she finally broke down and blurted out her story. Faced with the responsibility of sending her back to the NKVD empty-handed, John decided to adopt a high-risk strategy. He agreed to meet Nora regularly for "Russian lessons", where they concocted stories for her to relate to the NKVD. Nora's bosses finally discovered they were being duped and turned on her, revoking her citizenship. In desperation, she reached out to John. With loyalties now torn between his growing love for Nora and his role at the embassy, John was forced to make a near-impossible decision. He handed her the key to his flat at the British embassy. So long as she remained there she would be safe.
The Russians were furious. However, Sir Stafford Cripps gave Nora refugee status and she was permitted to stay. By now John and Nora were very much in love. But by 1941, the German army had almost reached Moscow. The British embassy was hastily evacuated and John ordered to the Arctic base of Archangel, leaving Nora behind. On arrival, he was shocked to find that, as a security risk, he was to be sent back to England. In despair, he phoned Nora to share the news.
With faked American documents, Nora escaped from a besieged Moscow, evaded NKVD agents in a 700-mile chase, and reached Archangel - only to discover that John's ship had already sailed, with him a prisoner. In fact, a raging blizzard had forced the ship to anchor a few miles up the coast. By now the temperature had dropped to minus 40C, yet Nora stumbled on through the night.
As in the best romances, John just happened to be on deck, and caught sight of a figure staggering towards the ship's jetty out of the snowy wastes. It was Nora. Once safely on board, John proposed.
But they still faced another hurdle: it was illegal for any Soviet citizen to leave the country and the captain was under strict orders to take John to Britain. He decided their only chance was to send a telegram to Stalin in the wild hope that he would take pity on them. But even as the message was being sent, Nora was kidnapped by the NKVD and hauled back to Moscow.
No one is quite sure why Stalin read John's telegram - even less why he responded. John believed it was because they appealed to the dictator's ego. More likely they were used by Stalin as a bargaining tool, to support his claim to his western allies that things in the Soviet Union were beginning to thaw.
Whatever the truth, John and Nora were allowed to leave the country in the spring of 1942, and John returned to England with his young Russian bride. The day after their departure, Stalin annulled the decree. Thus, Nora became the only Russian war-bride to escape the USSR during the second world war.
When they got back to England, life was not easy. John was ostracised by the British establishment after his experiences in Russia, although he always claimed he never once betrayed his country. He started a business with a revolutionary new printing process that would enable newspapers to be printed in colour. It was an idea years ahead of its time, but with insufficient capital, the business collapsed. The effort and disappointment nearly broke him.
Nora, meanwhile, had become something of a celebrity, as a result of her book I Spied for Stalin (1950). Under the weight of John's business failure and Nora's celebrity they finally separated in 1958, and John brought up his three sons alone.
In 1978, after studying history as a mature student in Nottingham, John wrote his story, A Spy Called Swallow. John loved Nora to the end, and in the last weeks of her life they were reconciled; he was with her when she died, in 1989. Their extraordinary relationship lives on, and is now the subject of a planned feature film.
In his last few years, John lived in a small council flat in north London. Only months before his death, he toured local secondary schools, recounting his story in a characteristically bravura performance. The children loved it. To those who knew him, he will be remembered not just for his exploits but for his honesty, gentleness and courage.
He is survived by two sons, Peter and Leeroy; a third son, John, predeceased him.
• John Murray, businessman and spy, born January 7 1908; died October 5 2000
7.12.2009
Can the Russian doll survive the recession?
The Russian nesting doll, the pride of a nation, is in trouble. For more than 200 years, the matryoshka has come to symbolise Russian handicraft at its finest, the brightly-painted dolls within dolls also revealing something of the mystery and complexity of the famed Russian soul. Today, as the country suffers its worst economic crisis in a decade, it appears no industry is immune.
"Without government support, pretty soon those businesses that now make goods with a multi-century history will disappear from the face of the earth," said Oleg Korotkov, general director of Semyonovskaya Painting, one of Russia's top handicraft makers.
Matryoshka makers have spoken of sales falling up to 90 per cent, as the economic crisis brings fewer tourists to Russia and Russians at home find themselves with less cash to spare on frivolous items.That has led to firings and wage cuts across the handicraft industry, which employs an estimated 30,000 people in 240 companies.
A few weeks ago, the government stepped in, saying it would place orders worth 1bn roubles (£20 million) for nesting dolls and other handicrafts in a bid to rescue the industry. The plan, crafted by the Industry and Trade ministry after a concerted appeal by handicraft makers, will see the Kremlin and various state agencies buy up dolls and dishes to hand out as gifts. But some warn that may not be enough.
The financial crisis first hit Russia last September and by November many matryoshka makers, centred around Nizhny Novgorod, the country's third largest city, saw their workshops fall silent. Production was slashed, and unsold dolls lined the shelves of the region's top handicraft makers.
The Khokhloma Painting Plant, the country's biggest matryoshka maker, sold around 100,000 nesting dolls last year, bringing in around £600,000, but this year it has slashed production to nearly half. For some, wages have been cut, from around £160 per month before the crisis to £60 today.
Recent optimism that Russia would soon plough its way out of the economic crisis has been quashed, as officials warn the country will likely see no growth until well into 2010, if not later. Last week, President Dmitry Medvedev made a rare admission of the dire situation in which Russia finds itself, revealing a budget with wide-ranging cuts and ordering the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to prepare to address a crisis that will last for at least another year. "We all understand what a difficult situation our country, our economy, is in," he said.
This year, Russia will run its first budget deficit in a decade and pessimists warn the economy may shrink as much as six per cent. The government has made no mention of turning back on its matryoshka bailout plan and some producers are ploughing forward. "Unfortunately, we had to stop production of items made from birch trees, wood carvings," said Mr Korotkov, of Semyonovskaya Painting. "The reason is understandable – our output isn't being exported, there's no demand.
"But our main souvenir – the Semyonovskaya matryoshka – we're continuing to produce. Orders continue to come in. Our nesting dolls are going to Japan, Germany, Argentina, other countries," he said.
Along the Arbat, Russia's most famous street, bustling with street artists, Soviet souvenir sellers and, of course, the ubiquitous matryoshka vendor, the stands remain full. Here you can find the traditional matryoshka, featuring a Russian peasant woman, full in the belly and painted in bright reds and yellows, purples and blues. There is the more modern take, with likenesses of Vladimir Putin or Barack Obama, but the doll painted as Adolf Hitler is one that many might not mourn were it to disappear from the shelves.
independent.co.uk
"Without government support, pretty soon those businesses that now make goods with a multi-century history will disappear from the face of the earth," said Oleg Korotkov, general director of Semyonovskaya Painting, one of Russia's top handicraft makers.
Matryoshka makers have spoken of sales falling up to 90 per cent, as the economic crisis brings fewer tourists to Russia and Russians at home find themselves with less cash to spare on frivolous items.That has led to firings and wage cuts across the handicraft industry, which employs an estimated 30,000 people in 240 companies.
A few weeks ago, the government stepped in, saying it would place orders worth 1bn roubles (£20 million) for nesting dolls and other handicrafts in a bid to rescue the industry. The plan, crafted by the Industry and Trade ministry after a concerted appeal by handicraft makers, will see the Kremlin and various state agencies buy up dolls and dishes to hand out as gifts. But some warn that may not be enough.
The financial crisis first hit Russia last September and by November many matryoshka makers, centred around Nizhny Novgorod, the country's third largest city, saw their workshops fall silent. Production was slashed, and unsold dolls lined the shelves of the region's top handicraft makers.
The Khokhloma Painting Plant, the country's biggest matryoshka maker, sold around 100,000 nesting dolls last year, bringing in around £600,000, but this year it has slashed production to nearly half. For some, wages have been cut, from around £160 per month before the crisis to £60 today.
Recent optimism that Russia would soon plough its way out of the economic crisis has been quashed, as officials warn the country will likely see no growth until well into 2010, if not later. Last week, President Dmitry Medvedev made a rare admission of the dire situation in which Russia finds itself, revealing a budget with wide-ranging cuts and ordering the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to prepare to address a crisis that will last for at least another year. "We all understand what a difficult situation our country, our economy, is in," he said.
This year, Russia will run its first budget deficit in a decade and pessimists warn the economy may shrink as much as six per cent. The government has made no mention of turning back on its matryoshka bailout plan and some producers are ploughing forward. "Unfortunately, we had to stop production of items made from birch trees, wood carvings," said Mr Korotkov, of Semyonovskaya Painting. "The reason is understandable – our output isn't being exported, there's no demand.
"But our main souvenir – the Semyonovskaya matryoshka – we're continuing to produce. Orders continue to come in. Our nesting dolls are going to Japan, Germany, Argentina, other countries," he said.
Along the Arbat, Russia's most famous street, bustling with street artists, Soviet souvenir sellers and, of course, the ubiquitous matryoshka vendor, the stands remain full. Here you can find the traditional matryoshka, featuring a Russian peasant woman, full in the belly and painted in bright reds and yellows, purples and blues. There is the more modern take, with likenesses of Vladimir Putin or Barack Obama, but the doll painted as Adolf Hitler is one that many might not mourn were it to disappear from the shelves.
independent.co.uk
7.04.2009
Russia beautiful women
Anne Applebaum On Capitalism And Russian Beauty
My email inbox has been overflowing with letters from readers ever since my last column about Russia's amazing abundance of beautiful women, and how the rise of free markets made them so gorgeous. Even academic heavyweight Michael McFaul of the Hoover Institute dropped me a note thanking me for pointing out the link between Russia's turn to open free markets in the 1990s, which he helped to design and promote, and the sudden revelation of Russia's remarkable female beauty.
"Yes, free markets gave rise to beautiful Russian women," wrote McFaul, "but what few realize is that today's Putin-era Russian beauties, who are even more appealing than the girls of the 1990s, would today be even drop-dead off-the-scale gorgeous had Putin not imposed authoritarian rule and clamped down on the free market."
Thanks for pointing that out, Michael! How right you are!
The link between beauty and open markets is incontrovertible and everywhere. Take for example Great Britain, where the proportion of hatchet-faced horse-toothed women declined from 98% of the female population during the Welfare State era, down to 97.85% of the population after Margaret Thatcher's market reforms took hold. True, the statistics have a margin of error of 5%, but as Michael McFaul correctly notes, that margin of error would be even greater had not free markets been introduced.
We needn't look overseas to understand this. In the USA, the dazzling lustful hippie girls of the Great Society era in the 1960s and 1970s gave way to the sexless post-Reaganomics American woman of today: fat-ankled, bitter, a bottle of Prozac in one hand and a jackrabbit vibrator in the other: she is the picture of free markets triumphing over the failed sexual socialism of the LBJ years. While it's true today's American women are frighteningly unappealing compared to their sisters of the protectionist past, at the same time, Michael McFaul would correctly argue that were it not for Reagan's market revolution, today's American women would be even fatter and angrier than the current generation.
When I look at myself in the mirror every morning, I say, "Anne, you look great, and you feel great, and it's all thanks to the open markets!"
I'm bringing all this up because in all of my excitement over Russian beauty, I forgot to cite the single most impressive and visible benefit that market reforms brought: the incredible explosion in Russian and East European prostitutes! Earth to Anne, hello Anne! There I was reminiscing about the Russian beauties appearing in high-class London hotel lobbies and restaurants in 1995, but the part of that story I left out was how most of the girls I saw in those places were working women.
If you recall my column, I noted how an old Russia hand friend of mine who'd spent time in the Soviet Union during the 1970s looked at the women in the hotel lobby and remarked, "But where were they all before?" I left out what he said after that: "Where were all the whores crowding the alley tochkas in every Russian thoroughfare, where were all the whores advertising on the Internet or the Moscow Times? If only I'd known, I would have done everything different!"
"They hadn't yet been saved by the free markets!" I chimed in cheerfully. "And don't forget, Old Russia Hand friend, open markets means open borders for hundreds of thousands of prostitutes, which means the exciting opportunity to become a globalized sex slave: in an Albanian trading post, a client to an AIDS-infested Nigerian peacekeeper, orthe chance to travel the world from a basement dungeon in Tetovo to a basement dungeon in Seoul! The trendy left-wing ivory tower types may talk of the evils of globalization, but what they forget is that without globalization, we wouldn't have this great mixing of cultures: Moldovan, Ukrainian, and Belarussian whores getting trafficked through NATO-run Kosovo through a network of Romanian, Serbian and Bosnian criminal gangs, then handed over to Albanian crime groups, and eventually sold to brothels from Saipan to Brazil and points in between!"
Something about this talk of open markets had my Old Russia Hand friend whinnying and salivating, and he couldn't wait to taste the free market benefits for himself. Without even letting me finish, he was out of his chair and bargaining with one of the London hotel lobby Ukrainian whores--that's right, "bargaining!" What better expression of the free market than bargaining!
Ah yes, we all have free markets to thank for our idyllic state of female beauty today, whether in England or Russia, and don't forget it.
I optimistically ended my last column by noting that you'll soon have the free markets to thank for other things as well, like the future-Ukrainian doctors who will cure your cancer, and future-Polish stockbrokers who will make you a fortune. Unfortunately you'll have to wait a bit more for that inevitable utopian moment, as today's free market Ukrainian doctors (or what's left of them since most abandoned the profession in the 1990s when their salaries dropped to levels that would make a Delhi street urchin laugh in their faces) demand bribes for treating everything from a sore throat to a severed artery, and in fact what's left of today's Ukrainian doctors is a mob of quacks so dangerously incompetent they couldn't diagnose a pregnancy from a bee sting, even if a tiny screaming head plopped out of a woman's dilated vulva, thrashing about for air and spitting afterbirth on the Ukrainian doctor's face.
Meanwhile, personal experience tells me that you would better trust your cash with a Hunter's Point crackhead than with a Polish stockbroker.
But that will soon change. Patience, everyone. It's only been twenty years since the markets were opened. It may take another 20 years, or 20 decades, before free markets create East Europeans who offer Westerners something besides whores. In the meantime, what's the rush?
Just ask my old Russia hand friend. His old hand has gone from spending years in his lap to 200 dollar sessions on young Moldovan girls' orifices, and he would be the first to say that it's never been a happier hand.
7.02.2009
Bad Dating
Of the 1,300 singles polled admitted to turning up late for a first date – or not showing at all; 28% talked about their ex and past sexual experiences, 14% confessed to over-indulging in alcohol, and 6% said they’d been chaperoned by a friend, their mother -- or even a pet. 14% of women surveyed admitted to drinking so much on a first date that they felt out of control.
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