Three Men Beat Omsk Taxi Driver and Extort One Million Rubles
Two foreigners and a Russian man are accused of extorting money from a taxi driver in Omsk.
Investigators of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Omsk Region (UMVD) have opened a criminal case against three people for extortion. Two of them are foreigners aged 22 and 25, and the third is a 40-year-old Russian, the police press service reported.
It turned out that at the end of November near a cafe on the Left Bank, the accused met a 25-year-old taxi driver. They asked him to go with them, allegedly to help a friend start a car with a dead battery. But at the scene, they began beating the man and threatened him with knives. They took 2,000 rubles (about $20 at current rates) in cash from the taxi driver and withdrew another 48,000 rubles (about $480 at current rates) from his card. Then the group demanded that he get them one million rubles (about $10,000 at current rates).
«Then they forced him to call his girlfriend and take her phone, and after seizing it, they pawned it for 70,000 rubles (about $700 at current rates). They backed up the extortion with a video: they forced the man to tell on camera that he was allegedly involved in drug sales. They threatened to send the file to the police and the victim»s relatives,« the report stated.
The Omsk resident was very scared and did not immediately report to the police. After some time, he did so and the extortionists were detained. They are now in custody. The investigation is ongoing.
Earlier we reported on Omsk residents who kidnapped a young man, took him to a cemetery, and extorted 250,000 rubles (about $2,500 at current rates).
