The dismembered dead bodies of a Russian crypto millionaire and his wife have been found in the Dubai desert after they disappeared more than a month ago.
Roman and Anna Novak were last seen by a driver in early October, who dropped them off for a meeting with what they believed was a potential investor near a lake in an area of Dubai called Hatta, close to the Oman border, local Russian news site Fontanka reports.
He was a wealthy cryptocurrency investor who founded the crypto platform Fintopio, while she worked as a TV journalist in Russia.
View this post on Instagram
Roman reportedly contacted someone close to them saying they were “stuck in the mountains on the Oman border” after they went missing and said he needed $200,000 (£152,000). Their phones were tracked for Days in Hatta, Oman and Cape Town before the signals suddenly disappeared.
Bags containing their body parts were then found in bins across the Dubai desert region of Fujairah the following day, on 3rd October. Cleaners found them and immediately reported it to the police. Dubai police then tracked Range Rovers and Fords scattering the sacks containing their mutilated bodies on CCTV.
Three suspects have been detained in Russia, who allegedly lured the victims to a rented villa using a staged investment meeting, where they attacked and killed the couple after they wouldn’t hand over the password to their crypto funds. They reportedly then went to the airport and left the United Arab Emirates. Five more people are believed to have been involved.
View this post on Instagram
“The investigation has established that the killers had accomplices who helped organise the abduction. They rented cars and premises where the victims were held by force,” Svetlana Petrenko, from the Russian Investigative Committee, said. “After the murder, the perpetrators disposed of the knives and the victims’ personal belongings, leaving them in different Emirates.”
The investigation is still ongoing.
For more like this, like The Tab on Facebook.
Featured image by: Instagram
