The court in St. Petersburg for the first time adequately resolved the apartment dispute according to the "Valley scheme"

The court in St. Petersburg for the first time made a decision to terminate the civil dispute over the return of the apartment to the former owner, who sold it under the influence of fraudsters. The seller and the buyer have reached an amicable agreement, Daria Lebedeva, head of the joint press service of the St. Petersburg courts of general jurisdiction, said in a telegram channel.

"During the proceedings, a settlement agreement was concluded between the parties on December 11. The proceedings have been terminated. The definition is subject to immediate execution," she wrote.

It is specified that in the summer of 2024, a certain Margarita sold an apartment to Konstantin for 5 million rubles. Later it turned out that from April 2024 to August 2024, unidentified persons contacted Margarita, introduced themselves as employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Central Bank, the FSSP, and under the pretext of saving her money, they were forced to urgently sell the apartment and transfer the money to them, which the plaintiff did.

After the sale of the apartment, Margarita appealed to law enforcement agencies, and in November she went to court demanding that the apartment purchase and sale agreement be declared invalid.

During the proceedings, the parties entered into a settlement agreement, making a joint decision to terminate the contract of sale.

"In connection with the termination, the parties agreed on the following: the plaintiff undertakes to return the funds received by her under the contract in the amount of 5 million rubles to the defendant using an irrevocable covered letter of credit opened by the plaintiff in favor of the defendant. The letter of credit is valid until April 2026. A condition for the disclosure of a letter of credit is a settlement agreement approved by the court. The defendant undertakes to vacate the specified apartment and transfer it to the plaintiff under the transfer act. The keys to the apartment are transferred simultaneously with the signing of the act," Lebedeva said.

The parties also agreed on the distribution of court costs.

As EADaily reported, fraud by analogy with Larisa Dolina's apartment has spread in the Russian real estate market and has even been called the "Dolina effect", the corresponding article appeared in Wikipedia is back on November 24.

After admitting that Dolina sold the apartment under the influence of fraudsters, the singer's real estate was returned, but without a simultaneous refund to the buyer. As a rule, in fraudulent transactions, the apartment owners are pensioners, the money paid for the apartment goes to the scammers, and the seller returns the apartment back through the court. The buyer remains without an apartment and without money, since the money remains with the scammers who are being sought and tried in criminal cases.

According to the Supreme Court, in 2024 alone, 4050 cases of challenging registered rights to real estate were submitted to the courts. The total amount of claims for such claims amounted to 1.5 trillion rubles.