Moscow man arrested for trying to set fire to home of weapons engineer, says scammers impersonating police talked him into it

A Moscow resident has been arrested in the city of Kolomna after allegedly trying to set fire to the home of the chief design engineer for one of Russia’s state defense enterprises, Russian state media reported on Wednesday.

“The incident occurred yesterday evening in Kolomna. A man threw a Molotov cocktail at the home of the head design engineer of an engineering firm in an attempt to set it on fire, but the fire did not start,” a law enforcement source told TASS.

The source said the man has been charged with attempted murder. He reportedly told the authorities that he was talked into throwing the improvised weapon by scammers pretending to be police officers and Russian Central Bank employees.

“The callers claimed that a loan for 1.4 million rubles ($15,500) had been taken out in the man’s name and that his accounts had been frozen. To get it unfrozen, he needed to set fire to the home that supposedly contained people dealing weapons for Ukraine,” said a law enforcement official.

The Telegram channels Shot, Baza, and Mash reported that the home where the incident occurred belongs to Valery Kashin, the deputy director of the holding company High Precision Systems and the chief designer engineer for the state defense firm KB Mashinostroyeniya. According to Shot, more than 20 types of high-precision weapons have been built under Kashin’s leadership.