“Salad for 100 thousand”: the organizers of a fake cafe were convicted

The visitors of the drinking establishment were extorted money under the guise of dates

A gang of swindlers who opened a fake cafe to deceive visitors has been sentenced in Moscow. Outwardly, everything looked plausible and decent, but when the time came to pay the check, the client was billed fabulously for ordinary dishes.

As MK reported at one time, the gang included dozens of accomplices, and as a result, four men and the same number of women ended up in the dock. Everyone had their own role. Some fraudsters officially registered a consumer market enterprise, others opened a cafe, others worked there as cooks and waiters, and others lured customers. The latter had the most important mission: they needed the victim, on the one hand, to be able to pay an expensive bill, and on the other hand, not to make a fuss.

A false cafe was opened on the first floor of a house on Oktyabrskaya Street. It differed little from similar establishments. However, only the guest room was real in this cafe. In fact, the catering point did not even have a kitchen. There was also no license to sell alcohol and food.

On the same street was the headquarters of the scammers. From here, attractive girls negotiated through social networks with potential victims. They met men through a dating site, made a date and invited a gentleman to “the same cafe”, which they positioned as a cozy place for private meetings. In order to completely confuse the man’s head, the girls came to the meeting in elite premium cars. Then they led the boyfriend to a seafood restaurant with an elegant little foyer that adorned an aquarium with fish. A couple of glasses of champagne and a salad ended up costing the man 50-100 thousand rubles. Although, in fact, the “cooks” simply poured the cheapest drink into expensive bottles.

In total, at least 9 people fell for the bait, the total amount of damage amounted to 434 thousand rubles. In May last year, the swindlers were exposed, most of them were visitors from St. Petersburg, where a similar scheme had previously been tested.

According to the press service of the Moscow prosecutor’s office, the Ostankino court sentenced all men to 2 years in a penal colony, two women to 2 years of probation with a probationary period of 2 years, and two more ladies to 1 year of probation, with a probationary period of 2 years. The verdict has not yet entered into force.