In the Arkhangelsk region, the case of employees of the Russian Standard Bank was sent to court. According to the Arkhangelsk Prosecutor's Office, employees of the local branch of the bank, Anatoly Stebnovsky, Sergei Cherepanov and Yulia Toporova, were charged with fraud with consumer loans on an especially large scale. During 2006, they called bank clients who had overdue loan debts. The debtors were assured that after they paid a relatively small part of the debt, the bank would write off the rest of the debt without consequences, as part of a special promotion. Having received the money, the scammers changed the debtors’ data in the bank’s computer database, thus writing off the balance of the obligations. The investigation found that 19 borrowers were misled in this way, as they eventually had to pay the bank the balance of the debt. The damage to the bank amounted to more than 500 thousand rubles. The defendants face punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of five to ten years with a fine of up to 1 million rubles. The alleged organizer of the group, Anatoly Stebnovsky, is in custody.
