The fog of the capital hides many a secret, but none so brazen as this. In the murky depths of the city's insurance trade, a gang of scoundrels—a veritable 'den of thieves'—managed to fleece the insurance houses of some two hundred million rubles. I have seen the grime of the slums and the greed of the high-born, but this particular trickery is a piece of work indeed!

Listen close, for here is how the game was played. Two half-brothers, kinship tied by blood but driven by avarice, hatched the plot. One was a veteran of the motor-trade for two decades, a man who knew every bolt and gear; the other, a clerk in an independent expert's office—a man whose pen could make a scratch look like a catastrophe.

Their method was as cruel as it was clever. They acquired Mercedes-Benz V-class carriages, registering them in the names of mere straw-men—poor souls who knew nothing of the devilry afoot. Then came the most sinister part: they placed a legless stuntman behind the wheel. With a roar of the engine and a scream of metal, the vehicle would be driven straight into a tree. A crash! A wreck! And then, the insurance money flowed into their pockets like gin in a dockside tavern.

But no matter how slick the rogue, the law eventually catches the scent. In February, the official voice of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Mistress Irina Volk, announced that the handcuffs had finally snapped shut. The arrest of these scoundrels sent a tremor through the underworld.

How this great syndicate operated, and how a single, clumsy slip—one solitary mistake—brought the whole house of cards tumbling down before the keen eyes of the detectives, can be read here.