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Housing wrecking: fraudsters in the field of residential housing deceived Russians by 30 billion
Russians have lost at least 30 billion rubles over the past five years due to fraud in the field of residential housing, Izvestia found out. The number of those who have applied to the initiative group of victims has already exceeded 3,000 people and may double, public activists are confident. People signed contracts, transferred money, but their houses were never built. Criminal cases have been initiated in several regions, and owners of real estate companies have been arrested. But construction is not resuming, no one compensates for the damage to the victims, and they continue to pay the mortgage and rent housing. The situation is explained by insufficient control in the field of residential housing, experts say: until recently, any entrepreneur who did not always realistically assess his capabilities could build houses. About the ways to solve the problem — in the material of Izvestia.
How to cheat in the field of residential housing
A new category of citizens affected by the actions of unscrupulous developers — this time in the field of residential housing — has appeared in Russia.:Their number at the beginning of March 2025 exceeded 3 thousand people, Izvestia found out. The damage caused by the actions of fraudsters and companies that have not fulfilled their obligations has exceeded 30 billion rubles over the past five years, according to an assessment by the All-Russian Initiative Group of victims in the field of individual housing construction.
There are already more than 100 names on the list of companies that deceived consumers, Daria Eliseeva, the organizer and head of the initiative group, told Izvestia. She herself suffered from the actions of Letwood LLC in St. Petersburg. In November 2024, its CEO Pavel Fedorov was arrested on fraud charges.
According to investigators, at least 46 people suffered from Fedorov's actions, many of them took out mortgage loans to pay for these contracts. The total amount of damage is about 100 million rubles. For example, the company has signed a contract for the construction of a modular house in the gardening of the Tosnensky district, including delivery, installation and installation. Fedorov convinced the customers to transfer almost the entire purchase amount to him — more than 4 million rubles. After receiving the money, he spent it on himself, but did not undertake the construction of the house, the victims stated in court.
— We ordered a small house from Letwood in 2023,— Daria Eliseeva told Izvestia. — It was supposed to be built in August of the same year, but it didn't happen. Then they began to mislead us, showed us other people's houses, and asked for a delay in handing over the facility. But in the end, we didn't get anything. And Director Fedorov said that I could go anywhere, but I wouldn't have any money or a house.
A similar situation has developed in Bashkiria with SK Grand Stroy LLC, operating under the UfaHaus brand. At least 150 families signed a contract with the company, but none of them entered their house.
— Everyone signed contracts with this company for the construction of houses in the period 2023-2024, but the houses were never completed," said one of the victims. — Most often, preferential mortgages were taken out for these purposes, including using maternity capital, and there were also cash transactions that families most often received from the sale of their only home.
According to the buyers, the land plots on which the construction was planned are located in Bashkiria, Chelyabinsk and Moscow regions.
— As we later found out, the owner and CEO of the company, Alexander Davletov, had previously been involved in companies such as Welldom and UfaStroika, which also had problems, — the source noted. — UfaHaus opened in 2023 and advertised itself in the real estate market as a company with high quality and fast construction time — from 150 to 180 working days.
In October 2024, the company completely stopped construction under the pretext of an internal audit.The buyers complain that the company's director ignored their demands all winter, limiting himself only to promises to continue construction later.
Indeed, in January Davletov stated to local media that he had suspended construction for the winter "due to a significant increase in the cost of work," and promised to resume construction after each project was recalculated "taking into account current prices.".
But now Izvestia has not been able to get comments from the company's owner. And the victims claim that Davletov is hiding abroad. The production of the UfaHaus company now looks like a rusty hangar filled with construction debris.
— More than half of the families were left with a bare foundation," the victim explained. — A criminal case has been opened now. All families with children, there are both large families and families with disabled children, single mothers. Also among the victims are members of the SVO and employees of law enforcement agencies.
The company's accounts are empty now. This business is a typical one-day office, it has no employees or any property, the victims now say.
Why is the number of victims growing
In Kostroma, about 400 people were injured by the actions of a local developer, one of the victims, Ksenia, told Izvestia. A criminal case has been opened against individual entrepreneur Evgeny Beldin, and he is under house arrest.
— He had previously built several apartment buildings and townhouses, and then decided to switch to private homes, she said. — My husband and I took out a mortgage for the purchase, but we never got a home. For several years now, we have been paying off the loan into the void. Those who decided to collect their money from him instead of contacting the authorities are now unable to do so. He has nothing, even after the court's decision, we do not know how he will compensate for all the damage caused.
Beldin was suspected of especially large-scale fraud before the situation with deceived buyers of private homes. He received more than 216 million rubles from the shareholders of one of the apartment buildings.
In Tula, the developer E-House (Partner LLC) has signed dozens of contracts for the construction of houses. The clients did not receive housing, and no one returned the money to them. It also turned out that the plots on which the developer was supposed to build houses belong to agricultural lands. Almost 200 people have multimillion-dollar mortgage debts. The situation is complicated by the fact that the loans were secured by houses that never appeared.
— In November 2024, we started writing statements to the police, but they refused to initiate criminal proceedings. At least some movement began after we posted an appeal to the president on social media.They immediately started summoning everyone for interrogations and collecting information. At the moment, 131 people have been recognized as victims," said one of those who were deceived by E-House.
Seven criminal cases have been initiated against this company at once. At the end of December last year, Dmitry Amelin, the head of Partner LLC, was arrested. His brother, who is not officially listed as the founder of the organization, but managed the company's business, was arrested in absentia and put on the wanted list. Several other partners of the company also ended up in jail.
Almost 200 families from Rostov-on-Don were left homeless due to a local construction contractor, sole proprietor Samvel Galstyan.
— Samvel Artovazovich Galstyan promised us to build a house in nine months. In fact, we have a foundation with violations. We transferred the full amount, 4.3 million rubles," said Natalia Kruzhilina, the victim.
At the same time, the entrepreneur does not hide the level of his income, and his girlfriend Evgenia Shershen demonstrates a luxurious lifestyle.The couple's yachts, luxury real estate and premium foreign cars appeared immediately after the clients' money got into the company's accounts, the deceived buyers claim.
How unscrupulous builders use schemes
According to Daria Eliseeva, by the end of the second quarter of 2025, the number of victims in residential housing may grow to 5-8 thousand people, the situation here is much more complicated than in the field of apartment buildings, she noted.
— Starting from criminal cases of fraud, it is very difficult, law enforcement agencies do not initiate criminal cases for a long time and do not conduct investigations, but send them to the civil law field, Daria Eliseeva explained. — Many people win the courts there, but in fact the person receives a writ of execution and that's it, then it doesn't work in any way.
Now "every second person can enter the field of residential housing," the head of the initiative group of victims is sure, explaining that until recently there was no proper control over the reliability of firms engaged in the construction of private homes.
— Banks have also tried very hard for all this, — Daria Eliseeva explained. — Because 80-90% are beneficiaries. 70% are family mortgage programs.We had a toggle switch on the fact that the bank issues loans only to accredited developers, so we did not think about possible fraud.
But on March 1, 2025, a new law came into force regulating the construction of residential buildings under contracts using escrow accounts. Now the buyer's money will be kept in the bank and transferred to the developer only after the construction is completed, and not in advance. This makes the process more transparent and protects customers from losing money.
The main reason that could lead to the appearance of deceived buyers in the residential housing segment lies in the specifics of the legal registration of transactions, said Evgeny Tkachev, a real estate expert. For a long time, they were poorly regulated and did not provide adequate guarantees for buyers.
— Before the introduction of escrow accounts in the residential housing segment, there were many construction companies registered as sole proprietors on the market," he explained. — They could sell houses with mortgages or for cash payments. Subject to certain conditions, banks transferred money to the developer in tranches as the facility was ready. However, such a scheme did not provide a complete guarantee of security. Buying a house under construction with cash was the riskiest.
Olga Anokhina, a lawyer in civil and arbitration disputes, noted that, based on practice, clients are promised to build a turnkey house in a short time for an attractive fee. Developers show beautiful advertising booklets and offer to see the houses they have allegedly built and sold. Potential customers have a high level of trust in the developer, and they often sign contracts that do not include estimates and projects.
— Then everything happens according to a well—established scheme — the client pays the full cost of construction under the contract or makes a tranche payment and the developer starts construction, and then disappears, she said.
Along with contacting the victims to the police, the most important thing is to go to court with a demand to terminate the contract, recover the amount paid, all penalties, moral damage and court costs, and at the same time seize all movable and immovable property of the defendant, said Maria Belonogova, a private investigator and head of a group of legal and valuation companies.
— Unfortunately, the situation with unscrupulous developers is very common and painful. And it's not new," the expert emphasized. — It is important to remember that the limitation period for such cases is three years, but it does not start from the moment the contract is concluded, but from the moment when the person learned or should have learned about the violation of their rights.
How to solve the problem of fraud in residential housing
The usual practice in residential housing was to draw up two separate contracts: the purchase and sale of a land plot and a contract for the construction of a house, said Evgeny Tkachev. This separation was used to avoid the deal falling under the regulation of Federal Law No. 214-FZ on shared-equity construction, which imposes additional obligations on the developer.
— It turns out that in such a scheme, the developer avoided additional taxes, and the buyer received a house at an affordable price, — he noted. — But the formal separation of the transaction for the purchase of land and the construction of a house led to a number of problems.
So, a house and a plot are different objects of law. Land is immovable property, the ownership of which is registered in the Federal Register. And the house, until it is built, does not legally exist, it cannot be bought as a ready-made object.
— You can only order construction. If the contractor stops work, the buyer remains with the plot, but without the completed house," the expert warned. — Since the calculations were carried out directly, the developer could disappear with the money without completing the construction. Which happened very often. In addition, the land was issued to the buyer immediately, and the house was built for a long time. In case of problems with the developer, it was extremely difficult to return the money, since the contractor could refer to the use of funds under the contract.
After the introduction of escrow accounts in residential housing, the risks, according to him, were minimized for the buyer.
The main task now is to find a mechanism for the rapid construction of houses for the victims, and a differentiated approach is important here, said Anton Saukov, head of the center for suburban real estate at the federal company Floors.
— Among other things, it is necessary to eliminate the risks of canceling subsidized rates for preferential programs due to violations of the deadlines for registration of houses, if this happens, - he said. — Last year was problematic for many developers in the residential housing segment, this was due to both an increase in debt burden, a reduction in the availability of preferential programs and a sharp reduction in banks in July in lending to construction under preferential programs without escrow accounts.
As a result, developers who did not take these risks into account found themselves in a stalemate where there are not enough working capital to cover all obligations, market loans are unavailable, and construction costs are rising. wrote Izvestia.
— A new mechanism with escrow accounts in residential housing will now cover these risks when applying for a mortgage for the construction of a house, but the problem with those private houses that have turned into long-term buildings needs to be solved separately, the expert believes. — But we need to figure out where the real fraudulent activities are and where the company has not taken into account the risks and has become a hostage to the current market situation.
One of the possible support measures, according to him, is preferential lending to developers who are ready to fulfill their obligations to customers and complete the construction of houses.
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