A 41-year-old woman in Kyiv is to stand trial for swindling nearly UAH 700,000 from a serviceman through a fake social media profile under the pretext of cancer treatment, the Kyiv city prosecutor’s office said.
"The Darnytsia district prosecutor’s office of Kyiv has sent an indictment to court against a 41-year-old resident of the capital, who is charged with large-scale fraud," the prosecutor’s office said on Telegram on Friday.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the woman registered a fake profile on Telegram with photos of a young girl and in the summer of 2024 struck up an acquaintance with a 31-year-old serviceman from the Zhytomyr region.
"In their correspondence it coincidentally emerged that they were supposedly from neighboring villages and had mutual acquaintances. Over time, the messaging turned into phone calls and talk of romance," the statement said.
The prosecutor’s office noted that the woman pretended to care about the serviceman and told him about her health problems — first Covid, then the final stages of cancer and that she might die.
According to the statement, the suspect "played on his sympathy and wrote that nobody needed her," while the serviceman sincerely believed these stories and repeatedly sought money for his "beloved," who eventually left to "receive treatment in Germany."
In the course of this communication, the man handed over nearly UAH 700,000 to the defendant.
