The fog of vice clings heavily to our city, and lately, it has drifted even toward the gleaming spires of the business district. There, in a scene that would make any honest constable shudder, a lad of seventeen years, hailing from the quietude of Zvenigorod, fell prey to the vultures of the street.

Imagine the scene: the poor boy, entrusted by his mother with a staggering sum of one and a half million rubles—the very proceeds from the sale of a carriage—set out with the fanciful notion of purchasing this modern alchemy they call 'cryptocurrency.' He ventured into the towering heights of Moscow-City, but the money-changers there turned him away, leaving the boy adrift and burdened with a fortune that smelled of easy prey.

As he stepped back into the grit of the street, the wolves closed in. A pack of strangers, with eyes like shards of flint, began to pester the youth, demanding to know the origin of his gold. Fearing for his safety, the lad and his companions scrambled into a hansom—a taxi, in the modern tongue—hoping to flee the sinister gaze of these rogues.

But the villains were quicker. With a sudden, violent surge, they tore the boy from the carriage! They clawed the bag of coin from his trembling hands and vanished into the urban haze, leaving the lad stunned and penniless.

Yet, the long arm of the law is not so short. The detectives, working with a tenacity that would please the finest Scotland Yard inspector, have swooped down upon the thieves. Three scoundrels now languish in a cell: two youths of nineteen years and a foreigner of twenty-two. A portion of the plundered loot was recovered from their pockets, and they now face the full weight of the Crown's justice.

Such is the way of the world; where there is gold, there are those who would steal it from the pockets of the innocent.