34-Year-Old Resident of Armavir Region Defrauds 14 Women Out of Significant Amount of Money

The investigative department of the Yerevan City Investigative Committee has completed the preliminary investigation into a criminal case regarding large and particularly large-scale thefts, misappropriation, and robbery committed by means of abusing trust. This was reported by the Investigative Committee.

During the preliminary investigation, the mechanism of the crime was determined, as well as the identity of the suspected perpetrator, a resident of Armavir Region born in 1985. Specifically, it was revealed that this resident, possessing psychological tricks to build trust and easily mislead people, decided to commit fraud by targeting divorced or single women as victims.

To implement his intention, he mainly established acquaintance with them through Facebook and Odnoklassniki social networks, presenting himself as a public official and giving a false impression of being a trustworthy person by making fictitious promises of marriage, companionship, and improving social and housing conditions. Under the pretext of acquiring a residence, he abused the trust of 14 women and between 2017-2019 committed 18 instances of significant, large, and particularly large-scale theft, taking a total of approximately 30,000,000 AMD.

Furthermore, in order to legalize the money obtained through deceit, he registered relatives, acquaintances, and close friends in a payment system and, having access to their username and password, personally managed their registered accounts via a mobile application, to which the victimized women transferred their funds.

As a result, the money transferred to these accounts was stolen through various banking transactions, namely transferring the money from one account to another and then cashing it out.

Based on sufficient evidence obtained during the investigation, the resident of Armavir Region has been charged under Article 178 (Fraud) of the RA Criminal Code, part 1 (two episodes), part 2, point 2 (ten episodes), Article 179 (Misappropriation) part 2, point 3 (one episode), Article 178 part 3, point 1 (four episodes), and Article 176 (Robbery) part 2, point 4 (one episode). The case has been sent to court with an accusatory conclusion.