Seems like, easy money has corrupted some of the beauty queens as well. Mrs Russia 2017 and Top Russia International 2018 finalists have found themselves in trouble after an alleged case of human trafficking.
The arrested suspects, Ksenia Starikova, 22, the supposed mastermind of the scheme and a mother-of-one, and Tatiana Petrova, 19, were held at the Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, as Petrova was allegedly boarding a plane bound for Turkey with the victim in tow.
Starikova, who runs a modelling agency, has been kept in custody while Petrova is under house arrest.
The victim is said to be an 18-year-old student of foreign languages in Moscow. According to reports, the police had performed an elaborate sting operation to catch the women in the act. The police had posed as buyers on the social media and had indulged in a long negotiation that went upwards of a couple of weeks. The price for the unsuspecting girl was set at £19,000 ($26000), and the deal was supposed to go down at the airport.
(Photo Credits - east2west news official)
The alleged plan of the women was to receive the money at the Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, and then take the girl to Turkey. However, it's not clear whether Turkey was their final destination. The girl was being transported under the pretence of having attained a high paying nanny job in a middle-eastern country.
Russian law enforcement sources told a section of the media, the victim would have been stripped of her passport, beaten, kidnapped , and then forced to work as a sex slave once the final destination of the sale had been reached.
The police nabbed the two accused ladies right after Ksenia Starikova collected the payment from the policemen disguised as the buyer.
It was only the effective and sincere work of the police, that one life was saved from the vicious world of human trafficking.
It is being said that the two beauty pageant contenders had been facing monetary issues, and had thus opted for this path. Starikova is currently divorced from her military husband, and has to support her 14-month-old daughter. However, no such details have been revealed about Petrova.