Police Warn of Bogus Census Workers

VLADIVOSTOK. October 22. VOSTOK-MEDIA – The Primorye regional interior ministry has received a call from a Vladivostok woman reporting her allowing into her apartment a census worker, who later turned out to be a con artist.

An interior ministry’s spokesman said the scam artist filled the apartment owner with so much confidence that she forgot to ask for his identification. The con man interviewed the woman for a while asking various questions and left the apartment. Later that day a young woman who was wearing an official badge knocked on the door showing her census taker’s identification card.

It was not until the next day that the woman told her husband about the impostor. The husband reported the police and census officials about the fake census worker only on the following day. The couple explained their slowness in reporting about the incident by the fact that nothing was stolen from the apartment and no harm was done to them.

Census officials said that anyone who suspects a census worker might be an impostor should call police at (4232) 214-174 for verification.

An official census worker should have an identification card and wear an official badge, blue scarf and a blue bag with a Russian Census of 2010 logo (Всероссийская Перепись Населения 2010).