News

A court has recognized the evidence collected by the Altai Territory Office of the Investigative Committee sufficient to convict residents of the town of Barnaul Maksim Goremykin who organized the fraud involving the flat owned by a veteran of the Great Patriotic War and Aleksandr Sukhoparny, an accomplice of another flat fraud. They were found guilty of a crime under Part 4 of Article 159 of the RF Penal Code (fraud, committed by a group of people in conspiracy, on a very large scale and entailing deprivation of citizen of their housing rights).

The court and investigators have revealed that in late March 2014, Goremykin learnt that 90-year-old veteran of the Great Patriotic War Tatyana Belokoneva lived alone in a single-room flat and was its sole owner. The man decided to acquire the ownership of her flat by deceit and abuse of trust without her knowing or consent. To accomplish the scam he involved director of a real estate agency Irina Gutseva and a nominal buyer Aleksey Stukalov. They made all necessary documents and filed them with the registration authority. As a result of a sham sales contract and the following procedure of transferring the ownership the veteran suffered a property damage of over 1,600,000 rubles and she lost the ownership of the flat. No sooner than in early March 2015 did the woman learn from representatives of a building managing company that her flat had been sold to somebody else.

On 11 May 2015, Ms. Belokoneva died in her flat after a long disease. The local investigative authority ran a check and refused to open a case due to non-criminal cause of death.

During the investigation into the fraud another similar crime committed by Goremykin, Gutseva and Sekhoparny in April 2014 was discovered. They run a scam on a share in a flat of a deceased resident of the town of Barnaul without her knowing or the consent of her next of kin who suffered a property damage of over 470,000 rubles and lost the ownership of the share.

The court having taken in account all arguments of the investigation, has found Goremykin guilty and sentenced him to 2 years in a minimum-security correctional facility. Irina Gutseva and another accomplice Aleksi Stukalov were found guilty earlier and got suspended sentences of 4.5 and 3 years respectively.