A court in St. Petersburg found a woman responsible for fabricating a theft in order to obtain insurance compensation. The decision was announced by the joint press service of the city courts.
In a July report, a resident of St. Petersburg contacted the Krasnoselsky district police, claiming that 150 thousand rubles had disappeared from her bank account after she lost her card, which allegedly bore the PIN code, in a hypermarket. The woman told investigators that the money had vanished from her account following the loss of the card, and she sought insurance coverage for the supposed loss. This statement triggered a criminal inquiry into the alleged theft.
During the ensuing investigation, authorities determined that the crime had not actually occurred. Instead, the applicant had fabricated the circumstances of the loss and theft in order to secure insurance money. The case shifted from a potential theft to a matter of false reporting, and the individual was warned about liability for presenting a fraudulent claim.
Ultimately the supposed victim was treated as a defendant once the evidence established the deceit. The court imposed a fine of 20 thousand rubles on the individual, with the stipulation that the payment would be made in installments, five thousand rubles per month, until the balance was settled.
In a separate, prior episode, the Russian woman had used gambling losses as a pretext to explain expenditures, including claims about a kidnapping, in an attempt to justify her actions to a spouse. This broader pattern of deception underscores a legal seriousness attached to false reporting and insurance fraud, and it illustrates how courts address such cases with penalties designed to deter similar behavior in the future.