Residents of Omsk recently made headlines after a 32-year-old woman took advantage of a technical glitch in a marketplace’s payment system to receive goods worth 1.7 million rubles without any payment being deducted from her account. Realizing that she could continue to make orders without consequence, the woman went on a shopping spree, receiving over 700 items including household appliances, furniture, children’s goods, soft toys, dishes, and jewelry within just two days. As the money remained in her account and the goods were delivered to her, she continued to order more items, accumulating a total of 1.7 million rubles in goods.
Eventually, the security service of the marketplace caught wind of the anomaly, froze the woman’s account, and contacted the authorities. Upon being apprehended, a significant portion of the goods acquired illegally were still unpacked. The police confiscated the items and launched a criminal investigation into the fraud case. A similar incident was reported in Krasnoyarsk in October, where a 23-year-old woman exploited a glitch in the Wildberries system to acquire goods worth 1.2 million rubles, including iPhones, jewelry, and game consoles. She sold some of the items online to cover her debts, prompting authorities to open a case of fraud on a large scale that could result in a prison sentence of up to 10 years.