Life is never boring in Russia!

Our latest adventure in looking for an apartment for our new team mate has been to say the least interesting. We found an apartment and signed the lease. We always take a Russian along with us whenever we sign any paperwork. Our good friend Lola was with Chris. The youngman stated that his parents were working in Spain and he wanted to rent out their apartment for them. He had all the proper paperwork to do so -- so the realator said. We paid 6 months rent in advance -- this is not unusual for us to do and it is easier for the book keeper and protects us from the rent going higher each month.

Two days later Chris goes with him to hook up high speed (all is relative) internet for our team mate.

I have yet to see the apartment due to our schedule.

On Friday the 7th, the youngman calls and is crying -- his grandmother died and he needed additional funds to bury her -- to make a long story short we gave him some money to bury her.

Afterwards, we went by to check out the apartment -- and lo and behold, we could not get in! After many calls to the landlord - to no avail, we contacted the realator -- she discovered that the parents still lived in the apartment and that Granny was alive and well!

Realizing (I know, we are a little slow) that we had been conned, on Saturday, Chris and Lola spent 8 hours at the police station filing a report -- it took a long time because they had to keep retelling the story. And finally the officer hand wrote the information in a report.

Tuesday of this past week, someone calls our home intercome system -- you would never believe it -- our con man land lord was down stairs and wanted to meet with Chris. Quickly I called Lola, who called the police. Chris met the guy and began to talk and stall him. Within about 7 minutes the police were here. Yeah!!! My faith in the Russian police was restored. We knew that we would never see the money again, but at least justice would be done and he would spend some more time in jail. He had already served 3 years for the same type of crime.

On Thursday, we had to return to the police station to finish up the reporting -- this is the third investigator that we have had to tell the entire story too -- this time she is typing it. We also thought that the con man realator was going to be there, but during the course of retelling the story for the 3rd time to the 3rd investigator, we discovered: THEY LET HIM GO BECAUSE HE PROMISED TO RETURN ON THURSDAY WTIH THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY THEY ACTUALLY LET HIM GO? A proven con man with a record and a habitual liar!!!! We just started laughing and and thought -- only in Russia!!!!

By the way, he never showed up at the promised meeting -- suprised?