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Muscovite to serve 4-year jail term for stealing works of famous painters

A 58-year-old woman stole works of well-known painters for a total sum of $925, 620

MOSCOW, September 13 /TASS/. A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced a 58-year-old woman to 4 years in jail for stealing works of well-known painters for a total sum of 60 million rubles ($925, 620), the press service of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said.

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"The court in Moscow’s Gagarinsky district passed a guilty verdict on Muscovite Svetlana Pribytkova, who was convicted on charges of fraud in huge amounts and the stealing of artifacts, which have special cultural value," the prosecutors said in their statement.

The court established that Pribytkova who had friends among collectors of paintings stole expensive paintings and the money of potential buyers from them in the course of four years (from 2007 to 2011). The stolen pictures included works by Ivan Shishkin; Ivan Aivazovsky and Nicolas Roerich. Under the pretext of purchasing paintings by Vasily Vereshchagin; Konstantin Aivazovsky; Vladimir Makovsky and Alexander Gorbatov, Pribytkova cheated another two buyers for more than 7 million rubles ($107, 275), which she used at her own discretion.

The total damage caused by Pribytkova’s actions exceeded 60 million rubles ($919,500). The court ruled that Pribytkova was to pay 19.9 million rubles ($304,967.5) in compensation to one of the victims of her manipulations.

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