In Moscow, authorities are pursuing a man who vanished with a Toyota SUV loaded with a substantial cash sum after a plan to move the money went awry, according to the Telegram channel Shot.
The incident centers on a 37-year-old retailer who runs a wholesale auto parts business. He was in the midst of preparing a real estate investment on Rublyovka and asked his 46-year-old brother to participate in the deal. The businessman handed his brother bags containing about 250 million rubles in cash amounting to 190 million rubles and roughly 550,000 US dollars, and handed over the keys to the Toyota Land Cruiser, instructing the brother to transport the money to the specified destination.
Before the handoff, the plan included stopping at a particular address to receive an additional 1.5 million rubles. For safety, the brother reached out to an old associate, a 34-year-old former employee of a private security firm that has access to traumatic weapons. The trio then moved toward the target, with the missing money and the criminal suspects disappearing along the way as they stopped at a shop in Lyublino for a brief interval.
During the moment when the businessman’s brother was away from the vehicle, the friend took the wheel of the Toyota and fled the scene, leaving behind no cash and no hijackers in the SUV. Law enforcement later located the car in the Kuzminki district, but the cash and the people responsible for the theft were nowhere to be found at that time.
Meanwhile, in Kaliningrad, a separate case involving a Croatian consul has surfaced, as reports indicate he is connected to legal proceedings related to an illegal Tesla dealership operation within Russia. The two narratives highlight ongoing tensions around high value assets, international actors, and regulatory scrutiny in the region.