Never serve outside. How the beggar mafia works

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Most of us have mixed feelings when we see people standing in the street with an outstretched hand. On the one hand, we have all heard something about scammers who make money on someone else's compassion, and common sense suggests that this is an obvious way to make money. On the other hand, different motives - be it the satisfaction of our own vanity, adherence to certain social norms, or sincere pity - still induce us to sometimes donate a coin or a bill.

Smart Magazine decided to find out what is actually known about the scammers posing as unfortunate sufferers, and how best to behave in this delicate situation.

What is the scale of the problem

There are no exact statistics on how many people are begging on the streets in Russia. However, there is still some information on this issue. First of all, it concerns the capital, since it is here that most journalistic investigations come out and volunteers of social movements are most active.

According to unofficial data, at least 100 thousand people are employed in the professional begging industry in Moscow. 80% of them are from other cities, and more than half are children. They collect from 7 to 12 million dollars a year. This allows the people at the head of this business to earn much more than their European and American counterparts (this is the conclusion reached by scientists from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

At the same time, according to some estimates, more than 90% of all beggars in Moscow are controlled by organized crime groups.

How much do beggars earn

The earnings of professional beggars depend on many factors. First of all - from a well-chosen place and from the most touching "role".

As for the first, religious buildings are especially attractive for people of this type of occupation, near which giving alms has been considered a tradition since time immemorial.

“Taganskaya Street is a klondike of the beggar mafia. There are two churches nearby, so the beggars just gorge on here,”says Oleg Melnikov, leader of the Alternative movement and perhaps the most famous expert on this issue - his comments can be found in almost every article about her.

One of these temples is the Intercession Stavropegic Convent, where the relics of perhaps the most popular Russian saint, Matrona of Moscow, are kept. The line of pilgrims from all over the country never gets scarce here, and it was here that Melnikov tried himself as a "beggar" in a wheelchair. Result: Oleg collected from 700 to 3000 rubles per hour.

Speaking of religion, “priests” who collect money for the construction of churches on the streets are, as a rule, also scammers. Real donations are collected by the ROC only on the territory of the churches themselves or through special boxes installed in large shopping centers. The ministers of the church themselves do not do this - it is forbidden by the charter.

Another “bread” place for beggars is the Moscow metro, where the flow of people is denser than anywhere else in the capital. So, in 2015, a wheelchair-bound wheelchair user interviewed by journalists, who traveled by carriage, earned 5-6 thousand rubles a day. True, he had to give 25% to the curators.

“The business is very profitable: each beggar brings the owner from 7 to 15 thousand rubles a day,” says Melnikov. - The costs are minimal: only the police rollback - rarely more than 100,000 rubles a month. It takes a penny to maintain slaves: they only need to be fed, but there is no need to spend money on medicines: the more compassionate a person looks, the more willingly they serve him."

This is another important element of professional “success”. The worse the “beggar” looks, the more he is served. In 2014, members of the Alternative movement released a woman who had been tricked into Moscow from Ukraine, promising to undergo eye surgery. Instead, her eyes were sewn up with coarse thread and sent to beg at the station. Passers-by were so impressed by what they saw that they could give her up to 50,000 rubles a day.

Modern slavery

Such cases are not uncommon and are part of the very real existence of an institution that seems to have sunk into oblivion long ago - slavery.

“In Russia, the number of slaves goes to hundreds of thousands, but they do not reach a million,” says Melnikov. “The statistics are as follows: about 40% of the slaves are the“poor”mafia, the same number are for the hostages of illegal factories, who are kidnapped, taken somewhere, for example, to the Caucasus … And another 20 percent are prostitutes."

In total, there are several hundred "masters" in Moscow, each of which contains from 4 to 8 slaves

“The slave market economy is simple. Buy a prostitute in a brothel - 5 thousand dollars. An old woman or a disabled person for begging costs 50 thousand rubles. Babies are sold to "Madonnas" (this is the name of a variety of beggars, representing a "mother" with a child - approx. UZ) as an attribute for begging tears from the beggars - from 60 to 100 thousand rubles, "- says Melnikov.

According to the activist, there is no single center for the slave trade; money flows to different people. Most of the business is owned by Moldovan and Astrakhan Roma. In the slave market, everyone knows each other, strangers are not allowed there. The zones of influence between the existing groups have been divided since the 90s.

“Let's say how people are recruited in Moscow on the square of three stations,” Melnikov continues. - A lonely person who appears there is being watched for a couple of days. Then they try to get him drunk. I changed into a homeless person myself. A man came up to me, poured vodka, only then I found out that there was clonidine. I woke up already on the bus on the way to Makhachkala - to the slave market. Well, it was hung with sensors, I was rescued on the way. Many of the small towns are attracted by a good salary, and then they are deceived and taken to brick factories in the same Dagestan. Or somewhere else”.

Children are the flowers of business

Babies, who cause the greatest pity in the public, are called “props” in the “beggarly” case.

“Children are bought mainly from dysfunctional families and, what is important, until a birth certificate is obtained for them,” explains Melnikov. “As long as the child does not have a certificate, he doesn’t seem to be himself, the state does not follow him, no one will realize that he has not been registered at the clinic, etc.”

The worst thing is that babies, according to the activist, do not live long - on average, 3 months. To keep them from crying while collecting money, they are pumped with potent drugs or alcohol. A terrifying detail: if a child dies “at work”, his “mother” is obliged to work out the due amount and time, and only then the corpse is thrown away. Then they take a new one, and attach the old birth certificate to it. 5-6 children can go through one document in a year or two.

Power in trouble is not a helper

There is a legal problem with babies being used by criminals for this kind of activity. The fact is that Article 151 of the Criminal Code, under which the actions of malefactors seem to fall, is called “Involvement of a minor in begging.”

This gives law enforcement officers a reason to refuse to initiate cases, since the wording implies active participation in the begging of the child himself, and in the case of an infant, this participation is not. It seems to be absurd, but at the same time a real problem, which probably cost many children their lives.

The “people's representatives” from the State Duma cannot do anything either: the bill on changing the title of the article to “Use of a minor in begging”, submitted for consideration either two or four years ago, has not yet been adopted.

Adults who have fallen into beggarly hopelessness, the state also helps every other time - "as lucky". In 2015, a Novaya Gazeta journalist got into a conversation in the metro with a citizen of Belarus who was collecting alms. On the day he gave back to the “roof” 1000 rubles, after which, according to him, he had no more than 200 rubles left. It was not so easy to help him. In the Moscow state "Social Patrol" the journalist's call was answered that they work only with citizens of the Russian Federation, and foreigners should contact the embassy.

True, the workers of the same organization who met on the street suddenly helped by sending the unfortunate Belarusian to the hospital and promising him a further course of social rehabilitation.

Slave stories

The terrible indifference of the authorities is also demonstrated by the stories of people rescued from slavery by the "Alternative" movement.

The first such person was Lyudmila from the Odessa region (it is from there that the bulk of the slaves are brought, thanks to the large number of Roma recruiters living there and the close border with another hotbed of poverty - Moldova). The woman herself managed to escape from the “owners” and turned to the police, but they listened to her only in the third department - they were driven out of the previous ones.

By the way, Lyudmila was detained in the village of Kraskovo near Moscow. Subsequently, it turned out that along with the nearby village of Bykovo, as well as the city of Mytishchi, Kraskovo is a kind of center for keeping slaves.

And here is how another elderly slave from Odessa named Zhanna, who was deceived into Moscow by deception, describes her work:

“You have to stand from 7 am to 9 pm. And only where they put it. You don't have the right to go to the toilet. All this time, one of the owners stands at a distance and watches. I hoped for the police, but in vain: I tried to escape once, darted into a cafe, thought: they would not find me. And I look through the window: the policeman shows the owner where I ran. The owner broke my leg for escaping.”

Not so unhappy

Despite the fact that slavery in the “beggarly” business does exist, in most cases street beggars refuse the help that journalists and social activists offer them. The bulk of the begging people choose this way of life consciously - whatever the reasons.

Therefore, the main advice for those who do not want to feed the mafia parasitizing on compassion with their money is not to give to beggars right away, but to offer them help. For example, associate with a social service. If a person refuses, then, most likely, he is not any sufferer, but simply makes money professionally.

One should always remember the golden rule, deduced by activists over many years of observation: "Those who donate usually need money more than those to whom it is given."