Ural Federal District’s division of General Prosecutor’s Office reports they detained the person who is believed to have masterminded a financial pyramid and to have stolen over a billion RUR. The name of the detainee is not being revealed for security reasons.

The authorities say their investigation revealed the fraudster had been advertising his scheme quite conspicuously for a number of years, promising great profits from interbank foreign exchange market speculation. The unsuspecting people were invited to invest in the firms controlled by the fraudster, who, in order to lure more customers in and to put the existing ones off their guard, used to upload fake rosy-looking financial reports online. In the meantime, the money he kept getting used to be transferred into his personal accounts and pocketed.

The swindler is reported to have stolen money from over 4,000 dwellers of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Sverdlovsk Region, Yaroslavl Region, Krasnodar Territory, and some other parts of Russia. The public prosecution authorities have initiated 119 criminal lawsuits altogether so far.

The detainee managed to hide abroad for a while and was put on the international wanted file. Finally, he was arrested by Interpol officers in Italy and imprisoned in June 2008. Russian public prosecution authorities sent their extradition request to Italian law-enforcement agencies in order to take the criminal to Russia and put him to trial.

Remarkably, even though the authorities do not disclose the name of the offender, the data available on the detainee actually correspond with the file of Alexei Kalinichenko, one of Bank24.ru’s former BOD members.