A Yekaterinburg court refused to return to a pensioner the apartment that had been sold under the "Dolina scheme".

      The Verkh-Isetsky Court of Yekaterinburg refused a pensioner’s request to recover an apartment she had sold after handing the money over to fraudsters, the unified press service of the courts of the Sverdlovsk Region reported.

      It turned out that the fraudsters had been communicating with the elderly woman for three months. They persuaded her to transfer 500,000 rubles to “safe accounts,” after which they sent her an extract from Rosreestr “proving” that her apartment had allegedly already been sold by unknown persons.

      The scammers then insisted on an urgent sale of the property. The woman realized what she had done only after the new owners asked her to move out quickly.

      The pensioner went to court and asked to have the bank transfers and the purchase agreement declared invalid. At the hearing the Yekaterinburg resident insisted that she had acted under continuous psychological pressure from the criminals and did not understand the real consequences. After examining the case materials and hearing the parties’ arguments, the court dismissed the claim. The property remained in the ownership of the bona fide buyers, the court noted.

      Earlier a lawyer explained how a buyer can protect themselves from the “Dolina scheme.”