Moscow installs fake CCTV cameras
Local government conned
WORDS | KEVIN O’FLYNN
Photography: © Corbis
IT’S A STORY WORTHY OF THE BIG SCREEN, though it concerns the small. Earlier this year Moscow police uncovered one of the most daring scams in recent memory, when they found that one third of the publicly financed CCTV cameras in one district – around 10,000 – were just empty boxes.
“The fraudulent methods varied,” said police captain Olga Dumalkina. “Not all the cameras were connected to the server, but linked to an ordinary computer which produced fake images.”
When police needed a shot from the nonexistent cameras, the company had a prepared frame, both day and night shots. If a live feed was required the screen would show ‘No Signal’ or ‘Connecting’. It took officers six months to uncover the scam.
StroiMontazhServis, the company that oversaw these cameras, was paid 30 million rubles (£617,000) for their services; now its director, Dmitry Kudryavtsev, faces security fraud charges. And StroiMontazhServis’s woes don’t end here. The company is also accused of using computer viruses to sabotage a rival firm that had won the tender for a different Moscow district.
Russia is relatively new to CCTV with the capital only completing city-wide video surveillance of apartment buildings in 2009. The move toward surveillance began after explosions destroyed two apartment blocks in 1999, killing hundreds of people in attacks that sparked the second Chechen war. By 2006 all residential buildings in the centre of Moscow had CCTV on the outside and in building foyers. Now the streets are covered by electronic eyes, although some appear to be more vigilant than others
