A scammer who raised $500 million through a fraudulent crypto app before fleeing with his investors’ money was murdered and dismembered along with his wife when furious kidnappers discovered his crypto wallet empty, authorities say.
Russian nationals Roman Novak and his wife Anna were last seen alive Oct. 2 after being lured to a mountain resort outside Dubai by criminals posing as potential investors, the Russian outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda reported last week.
The couple — who frequently flaunted their luxurious lifestyle in Dubai with online photos of themselves enjoying fast cars and private jets — were being “extorted” for their cryptocurrency stash, the newspaper said, citing UAE law enforcement.
The pair apparently won no friends as they also frequently posted pictures of a posh Rolls-Royce and vintage British Cobra car, worth a staggering $1.9 million combined, as well as photos of trips to Disneyland and other foreign vacations.
After the couple was lured to a villa in the town of Hatta, they were held while their kidnappers demanded the password to Novak’s crypto wallet, authorities said.
But when they discovered the wallet was empty, the criminals allegedly killed the couple, dismembered their bodies and scattered the body parts, leaving some of them in trash cans at a shopping mall, the Russian outlet Fontanka said.
It’s not clear what if any of the pair’s remains have been recovered.
“According to preliminary information, Novak and his wife were kidnapped for ransom. When the criminals realized they wouldn’t get the money, they killed both of them,” a source told Komsomolskaya Pravda.
The last signal from their phones was received Oct. 4, thousands of miles away in Cape Town, South Africa, before the connection was permanently lost, according to law-enforcement authorities in St Petersburg who are investigating the deaths.
Eight people have been arrested in connection with the pair’s disappearance and murders, including alleged former investors defrauded by Novak and an ex-employee of Vladimir Putin’s Interior Ministry.
Three are alleged to have carried out the murder, while four are accused of plotting it through purchasing the knives thought to have been used in the killings.
The role of the eighth suspect has not yet been revealed, and police have not said what the kidnappers expected to do with the knives if they didn’t originally plan on killing the couple.
Novak reportedly had a long history of crypto scams and previously served time in a Russian prison over the theft of about $100,000 from investors.
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