In March, two attacks in Moscow became public, and investigators say both were connected to phone scammers. According to law enforcement, people posing as police or other officials convinced the suspects they were taking part in supposed operational activities and then pushed them toward violent crimes.
The footballer’s case
A court placed 20-year-old Ural-2 player Daniil Sekach in custody on charges of murdering a 48-year-old woman in an apartment on Stroginsky Boulevard and committing armed robbery on a particularly large scale. Investigators say the crime took place on December 13. Earlier, unknown callers allegedly told Sekach he could face criminal liability and offered him “cooperation.” Before that, he said, another caller had tricked him into disclosing personal data, after which he was told that his account on Gosuslugi had been hacked.
According to the investigation, the scammers also manipulated the apartment owner’s underage daughter, convincing her to let in a man for what was presented as a search. Sekach arrived carrying an angle grinder, a crowbar and a sledgehammer, and began opening a safe. When the apartment owner tried to stop him, he demanded the code and attacked her. She suffered multiple blows and stab wounds and died. Investigators say he then took more than 2,000 dollars and other valuables from the safe and threw them out of the window on the instructions of his “handlers.”
The investigation says the items were picked up by a 22-year-old Moscow resident, who later passed them to the organizers. She is also alleged to have helped buy the angle grinder; investigators say she is expected to be charged with robbery. RIA Novosti also reported a case involving violent sexual acts against a minor connected to the same incident, though no details were disclosed.
The student’s case
In the second case, investigators say 20-year-old Muscovite Elizaveta Mazurova received calls from people claiming to be law enforcement officers. They allegedly told her she was helping identify “foreign agents” and “enemies of Russia.” By March 14, according to the Investigative Committee, she was instructed to kill a woman described to her as a “foreign agent.” Mash reported that the target was in fact an ordinary 58-year-old Moscow resident.
Investigators say Mazurova was told to buy masking tape, pepper spray and a hammer. She then went to an address on Akademika Anokhina Street, rang the doorbell, sprayed gas toward the apartment owner and swung the hammer, but the woman’s relatives quickly intervened and stopped her. On March 18, Moscow’s Nikulinsky Court ordered Mazurova held in pretrial detention on charges of attempted murder committed by a group acting in prior conspiracy. She did not admit guilt and refused to testify, invoking Article 51 of the Constitution.
In both cases, the identities and role of the supposed “handlers” remain unclear. Investigators have not said whether the attack on Stroginsky Boulevard and the attempted killing on Akademika Anokhina Street are being treated as connected to each other or to other phone fraud cases.