Unlike the Russian gas scams in my previous two posts, this one is recent, perpetrated by Russians in America. They’d steal a car—say, a Mercedes—take it to a shop, and completely gut it. Then they’d abandon the still-pristine but empty body on the side of a road.

Eventually the shell of the car would be picked up and sold for pittance at auction. And there to buy it would be one of the Russian crew. The body came with a clean title after a legal purchase. And you know what happened next. The car went back to the shop where all its innards were replaced and a good-as-new Mercedes would be legally exported to Russia.

This was an easy scam. So easy that the crew got lazy and left one too many stripped-down bodies on the same road. And that’s how they were caught.

As told to me by an elderly Russian couple, along with this story, and this one.