A Russian crypto millionaire and his wife have been k!lled after they were kidnapped and dismembered after being lured to meet ‘investors’ in the United Arab Emirates.
According to Mail Online, Roman Novak, 38, and his wife Anna were last seen alive a month ago when they drove to meet who they thought were investors in Dubai’s mountain resort Hatta.
The report said the flamboyant Dubai-based couple were ‘extorted’ for crypto-currency, said reports citing law enforcement.
Just before disappearing, Novak had obtained a highly collectable elite British AC Cobra car.
It is believed that the couple were driven to Hatta by their personal driver, who took them to a car park by a lake before they transferred to a different vehicle for the remainder of the journey.
It was at this time that Novak had messaged contacts in his phone to say he was ‘stuck in the mountains on the Oman border’ and desperately needed £152,000.
‘Subsequently, contact with the young couple was lost,’ said Svetlana Petrenko, of the Russian Investigative Committee.
Their phones were then tracked for two days in Hatta, and next in Oman and Cape Town, where the signals vanished in early October.
It is now believed the killers arranged for the victims’ phones to be turned on in order to confuse investigators.
The alarm was raised by the glamorous couple’s relatives in Russia before the severed remains of Novak and his wife were found buried in a desert in the UAE.
Two fighters from Putin’s war in Ukraine and an ex-murder squad detective are now said to be behind the killing and dismembering of a Russian couple.
Three Russian suspects were shown being detained in St Petersburg, and the Stavropol and Krasnodar regions of Russia ‘after returning from Dubai’.
They were named as Russian citizens Konstantin Shakht, 53, a former homicide investigator turned drugs smuggler, along with Yury Sharypov, 46, and Vladimir Dalekin, 45, who both fought for Russia in the war before being discharged.
Allegedly they were the ‘investors’, who, after abducting the couple, demanded the password to Novak’s crypto wallet.
‘Novak didn’t resist – but there was no cryptocurrency left. The wallet was empty,’ reported Fontanka news outlet.
The pair failed to raise a ransom from elsewhere. ‘Roman and Anna were killed and then dismembered.
‘Emirati police found traces of Anna Novak’s blood at the villa, blood in the rented car, a cache of knives near the crime scene, and one of the organisers’ T-shirts left behind in haste,’ reported Fontanka.
The three alleged conspirators were remanded in custody until December 28. Five other Russians, all under 25, are believed to be linked to the gruesome case.
Novak had boasted of wealthy contacts, including the billionaire owner of the Telegram social media empire, Pavel Durov.
He was under investigation at the time he disappeared over the alleged theft of more than £38 million from crypto investors on the pretext of business development.
Among the alleged victims were ‘businessmen from China and Middle Eastern countries’, according to a Russian report.
‘He had a knack for presenting himself as someone operating on the same level as Pavel Durov and Arab sheikhs,’ said Komsomolskaya Pravda [KP] newspaper.
‘In reality, Novak was simply a talented manipulator who managed to convince people to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars.’
He ran a ‘fast and reliable crypto network’ with an app developed ‘by Ukrainian programmers’.
Novak had earlier served a prison sentence for embezzlement, according to Russian reports.
‘Recently, Russian law enforcement carried out inspections of crypto exchanges in Moscow City, searching for traces of his investments,’ said KP.
The couple’s orphaned children were collected by Anna’s parents after their disappearance.
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