MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/. Professional criminals in Russia are increasingly focusing their illicit activities on the theft of flowers ahead of the International Women’s Day holiday on March 8, one of the biggest days of the year in Russia for flower sales.

A truckload of tulips worth almost 3 mln rubles ($33,000) was stolen in the Moscow Region, a law enforcement official told TASS. A businessman filed a complaint with the police, reporting that persons unknown had committed identity theft to impersonate him at the entrance to a wholesale flower market in order to reload a consignment of tulips meant for him from a Kamaz truck onto another vehicle, after which the flower thieves fled the scene.

Meanwhile, unidentified criminals stole flowers worth 1.8 mln rubles ($19,800) in the Urals region city of Yekaterinburg, Interior Ministry Spokesperson Irina Volk said.

"The director of a major Russian florist company filed a police report, saying that a shipment of flowers worth over 1.8 mln rubles had been stolen. It was supposed to be delivered from Chelyabisnk to Omsk and Novosibirsk," she wrote on Telegram.

A man responded to a delivery request posted online, presenting himself as a transport company employee. The parties signed a freight forwarding contract. However, the perpetrators, pretending to be the customer, contacted the transport company dispatcher and designated a different location in Yekaterinburg for unloading and receiving the flowery freight. It turned out later that they sold the stolen shipment of flowers to another florist’s store for the cut-rate price of 500,000 rubles ($5,500).