Businessman's apartment near Volgograd seized in 'Dolinaya effect' case
The apartment purchased by the director of an electronics store in Volgograd«s satellite city of Volzhsky has been seized for the duration of the investigation into the »Dolinaya effect« fraud case. Karen Badamyan fought for about a month with an elderly woman who claims she was defrauded by scammers for the right to enter, and he even won—they gave him the keys. But it is currently impossible to live there normally.
Let us recall that Karen fell victim to a scam named after singer Larisa Dolinaya, with which it all began.
The principle is almost the same everywhere: a person (often elderly) sells their apartment to a new owner, and then goes to the police claiming that scammers forced them to make the deal.
The «victim,» of course, no longer has the money. They claim to have transferred it to the criminals, and the apartment is often seized from the new owner.
The 46-square-meter apartment, as we reported earlier, was bought by the businessman in late October 2025 from a 70-year-old woman. She cited the desire to move to her sister in another city as the reason for the sale. During the transaction, Karen recorded the woman on video, in which she stated that she understood the situation and was selling the property voluntarily.
That understanding evaporated two weeks later when it was time to move out of the apartment: first, the former owner asked for another week, citing force majeure, and after that expired, a police officer spoke with the businessman.
«According to her daughter, the woman was allegedly hypnotized. The scammers convinced the grandmother that she could make money on the stock exchange: the family apparently has some outstanding loans, and the grandmother wanted to earn money. After the sale, she withdrew the money in parts and allegedly gave it to someone.»
The keys to the apartment were not given to Karen, but the family also cannot return the over two million rubles (approximately $20,000 at current rates) for it—they don«t have that much money. However, after a month, the new owner was allowed into the apartment. But there is a nuance.
«A criminal case for fraud has already been initiated, and, as a police officer told me, my apartment will be subject to a seizure prohibiting any registration actions,» he says in the video.
Karen and his lawyer, as he recounts, were called in for questioning on 30 November 2025 as witnesses. Afterwards, they managed to come to an agreement with the former owners« lawyer, and they did hand over the keys. The grandmother, according to him, moved in with her daughter, who has her own apartment in Volzhsky.
«Even if the seller was deceived and the money was taken, what does that have to do with my apartment, for which I paid in full and transferred the funds to the seller, not to some scammers,» Karen reasons.
In a conversation with V1.RU, Karen said that the family did remove their belongings from the apartment, but it is currently impossible to live there—there is nothing inside, just walls. As he complained, he is still being kept in the dark about the details of the case.
