He simulated his death and his wife made a false funeral, but his son found him alive and all sank.

The corpse was found in bushes at the edge of a dirt road in a rural town in Moldova on the morning of October 1, 2011. A few hours later, Irina Vorotinov's phone was ringing on the other side of the world.

At her home in Maple Grove, Minnesota, Irina announced this terrible news to her two grown children: the body was that of his father, Igor Vorotinov.

The circumstances were strange. The well-dressed man does not seem to have been touched or shot, at least for what he could say only judicial police officer and his body was already in decomposition. With the help of his son, the police officer quickly took the body to a morgue, an old building in poor condition, without air conditioning or air conditioning, whose only green door was accessible only by a dirt road. The, the coroner determined that the man found in the bushes had died of a heart attack. He wore the pbadport of Igor Vorotinov, among other pieces of identity.

Irina Vorotinov boarded a plane. He arrived at the village of Cojusna and accompanied by a representative of the United States Embbady, She went to the morgue to confirm that the deceased was Igor Vorotinov, her ex-husband. She told the authorities that yes, she chose to cremate her in Ukraine before returning home with ashes in an urn.

On November 4, 2011, Irina held a funeral at Lakewood Cemetery. in Minneapolis, attended by many members of the Russian local community who knew Igor well, according to federal prosecutors.

But in a short time, Igor's eldest son, Alkon, was on the verge of discovering a $ 2 million secret.

During a trip to Moldova in June 2012, while visiting a friend of the family during a party, Alkon has found his father alive.

For Alkon and for the relief and horror of his brother, the body found in the bushes did not belong to his father. The ashes were also not in the urn. Instead, federal prosecutors said: his father lived big and with a false name in Moldova and Ukraine, reaping the rewards of a life insurance policy $ 2 million that his ex-wife charged while he knew Igor was alive.

Now, after the authorities have spent years looking for Igor Vorotinov, The 54-year-old man was convicted of mail fraud Friday after pleading guilty in a federal court in Minnesota. Irina, 52, had already pleaded guilty in 2016 and was sentenced to 37 months in prison for organizing her funeral and urged the insurance company to pay her for the life insurance contract. an amount of 2 million euros. Prosecutors said she was planning to part with her ex-husband.

Alkon, 29, pleaded guilty in 2015 to failing to report the fraudulent scheme of his parents to the authorities. He was sentenced to three years of probation. His lawyer stated that he was a victim of the deception of his parents, But prosecutors said their concealment was part of the family plan.

"The way this crime was executed was quite sophisticated", writes federal prosecutors in court documents. "We now know that a body was found in a field in Moldova. The government executed a search warrant in the Lakewood Cemetery, which contained human remains. In one way or another, Moldovan officials were paid to write false reports in order to give the impression that Igor was really dead. This offense required skillful coordination and execution"

Irina submitted the insurance claim to the Omaha Mutual three days after the "Simulated funeral of Igor", said the prosecutors. The insurance company has retained Worldwide Investigations to confirm that Igor was really dead in Moldova. But prosecutors say the plot was so entrenched that many people questioned the insurance company, including the police officer and the coroner, were involved. Police and morgue staff said no one took a picture of the body because no one had a camera.

In March 2012, Irina has received more than $ 2 million and started distributing them worldwide.: Switzerland, Hungary, Moldova. Alkon participated in some of the transactions. But his lawyer, Matthew Mankey, says that He did not know that his father was alive before he saw him. Prosecutors have not challenged this request.

The discovery of June 2012, Mankey said in the court documents, surprised him.

"I lived an emotional roller coaster with the supposed death and resurrection of his father" wrote Mankey. In fact, he had to attend a funeral / memorial service for his father before discovering later that his father was alive. What kind of people are doing to their own children that kind of emotional torment?

Alkon continued to visit Moldova to visit his father and told prosecutors that at some point, his mother joined him for a New Year celebration at the end of 2012. But eventually, repeated vacations have attracted the attention of researchers.

June 18, 2013, the FBI received anonymous information from someone in Moldova, saying that Igor Vorotinov was alive, who lived under the false name Nikolay Patoka in Ukraine or Moldova.

The next time Alkon and his Moldovan wife returned to the United States from Moldova in November 2013, US Customs and Border Protection stopped the couple and confiscated their property.

An FBI agent told the court in 2015 that several curious photos of the alleged death of Igor had been found on Alkon's mobile phone: He was there in April 2013, posing with the girl of Alkon's girlfriend in a park. He was there in May 2013, playing with the girl in a pool and "very alive", the agent testified.

Irina and Alkon were arrested in 2015, while Igor remained in Moldova. While the federal authorities were investigating, Alkon provides incriminating information to his parents, which leads to most favorable advocacy agreementbut the federal government said in the judgment documents that it almost ruined it.

At the last minute, Alkon met the prosecutors and spontaneously called his father by phone from Moldova. Igor then came up with an elaborate story about a kidnapping that prosecutors called "visibly ridiculous", designed to make Irina innocent. Igor claimed that his friends in Moldova simulated his death without his knowledge, they then kidnapped him as part of a plot to steal all the money from life insurance. Igor and Alkon claimed that the kidnappers had asked for a ransom in Alkon, that the plan as a whole was that of the kidnappers and that Irina had nothing to do with it.

"What he did here, by participating in the making of this ridiculous story to make believe in the kidnapping of Igor, and his death organized by his captors, unbeknownst to Irina, was so stupid that in reality he seems to have taken for his guilty plea instead of hindering the path of his conviction", wrote the prosecutors.

Igor was arrested in Moldova last November for mail fraud and extradited to the United States. In his plea agreement filed Friday, prosecutors still do not reveal how he or others have succeeded find a corpse in which to place your identity papers. He is expected to be sentenced in July and prosecutors are demanding 41 months in prison.

The lawyers for Irina and Alkon say that they were forced to suffer for the sins of the fatherwho got nothing from the scheme and lives in poverty for years Igor lived comfortably with his girlfriend in Transnistria, Unrecognized unrelated state in Moldova.

Irinia's lawyer stated that in November 2011, the same month, she filed a fraudulent insurance claim; her bad cancer had recurred after a long referral. She underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy before losing her home due to a foreclosure while she was listed on a medical expense listsays the lawyer. Just before being sentenced to prison in 2017, she lived in subsidized housing "like a delinquent without resources".

Alkon, his lawyer wrote in presentations before the sentencing of suicide attempt at any time. Due to her mother's illness and her inability to work, Mankey said the son would probably pay a large portion of $ 2 million to the Omaha Mutual in the context of restitution.

"He will probably pay the Omaha Mutual all his life", wrote Mankey.