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An investigation into a real estate fraud case has been completed in Minsk. City residents were persuaded to exchange their apartments for houses in rural areas that turned out to be worth several times less, while the perpetrators pocketed the difference.
According to investigators, a 55-year-old Minsk resident from 2007 to 2024 offered apartment owners a supposedly “profitable scheme”: selling their housing in Minsk, buying a house in the countryside, and receiving the difference in value in cash.
One of the first victims was an unemployed Minsk resident leading an antisocial lifestyle. The fraudster organised a fictitious purchase and sale transaction of her apartment, with his brother, who was unaware of the criminal plan, acting as the formal buyer. The apartment was then resold to real buyers, while the woman was relocated to a house in a village in the Maladzyechna District. The accused kept the difference in money for himself. The victim later died without ever learning that her apartment had in fact been transferred free of charge.
In 2018, the man brought his 31-year-old son into the scheme. Their next victims were an elderly Minsk resident and her son with a mental illness. Under the guise of help and care, an accomplice regularly visited the family, gaining their trust. One day, the woman complained about conflicts with neighbours, and he convinced her to exchange the apartment and move out of the city, assuring her that life there would be calmer. When difficulties arose with paperwork, an acquaintance who was a notary was involved. Despite the obvious incapacity of the man, the notary unlawfully certified his consent to the transaction.
The victims’ apartment was exchanged for housing in the Minsk Region belonging to the wife of the accused. The value of the properties was knowingly unequal: the regional apartment was estimated to be about five times cheaper.
The investigation established that at least six Minsk residents were defrauded using a similar scheme, mostly people who found themselves in difficult life circumstances or were unable, due to age or health, to properly assess what was happening. Acting both alone and together, the fraudsters obtained apartments and cash belonging to the victims worth more than 200,000 roubles.
Despite the passage of time and the refusal of one of the defendants to testify, investigators managed to reconstruct the full picture of the crimes. It was also established that the organiser’s son had previously been held criminally liable for drug trafficking.
The father and son were charged under Part 4 of Article 209 of the Criminal Code (fraud on an especially large scale), and the notary under Part 3 of Article 424 (abuse of official authority).
In 2025, the court delivered a guilty verdict. The organiser of the scheme was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, his son to four years. Both will serve their sentences in a high-security penal colony. The notary was sentenced to four years in a high-security penal colony and banned from practising as a notary for five years, the Investigative Committee’s press service reported.