Prosecutors from the Lviv Regional Prosecutor’s Office proved in court the guilt of a 31-year-old resident of the Khmelnytskyi region who defrauded the relatives of a serviceman.
The court-imposed sentence is 3 years of imprisonment. It was proven that in April of this year, the man executed a fraudulent scheme to obtain money from the mother and sister of his acquaintance – a drone operator.
Initially, the serviceman’s sister posted on the social network ‘Facebook’ that her brother was missing in the combat zone. Seeing this post, the convicted man contacted the woman. Taking advantage of the victims’ vulnerable state, he convinced the serviceman’s sister and mother that he had found their relative and that he was supposedly injured.
Subsequently, the man assured them that for 4,000 USD, he could arrange the transfer of the serviceman from the combat zone to Khmelnytskyi. However, the mother of the serviceman was soon asked to submit DNA to confirm her son’s death. Upon arriving for the examination in Lviv and speaking with the investigator, the women realized they were being deceived. To hold the fraudster accountable, they then acted under police control.
The man was detained under Article 208 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine right after receiving the agreed sum. He is charged with fraud (Part 3 Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The pre-trial investigation was conducted by the Main Directorate of the National Police in the Lviv region, with operational support from the Strategic Investigations Department in the Lviv region of the National Police of Ukraine. The sentence comes into legal force after the period for appeal expires.