Oh, too delicious!!!

 

I laughed out loud when reading this report.

Chechen police have detained three female con artists who talked fighters of the terrorist group Islamic State into sending them money for traveling to Syria.

The young women turned the tables on Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) by using their primary recruitment tool, social media, against them. Russia’s predominantly Muslim Chechen Republic is a prime target for Islamic State propagandists, who call on young men and women to join their cause and travel to the Middle East to become join their jihadist campaign.

But with the Chechen girls apparently the joke was on Islamic State, as they made a business of meeting recruiters online and pretending to be eager to go to Syria. The only obstacle, they said, was the lack of travel money, which the recruiters were often willing to provide. Once the money was sent via anonymous electronic transfers, the swindlers would simply cash the money and delete the social media account used in the con.

The three-girl operation managed [to] swindle some $3,300 from Islamic State recruiters before being caught by a Chechen police E unit specializing in monitoring online activities for evidence of crimes, Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reported.

“I don’t recall any precedent like this one in Chechnya, probably because nobody digs deep enough in that direction,” Valery Zolotaryov of the E unit told the newspaper. “Anyhow, I don’t advise anyone to communicate with dangerous criminals, especially for grabbing quick money.”

There's more at the link.

Chechnya is home to probably more Islamic radicals than any other place on earth.  They've long been the backbone of many Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups all over the place.  One of their traditional ways of operating has been through social media, seeking to propagandize weak-minded individuals into their way of thinking and (hopefully) get them to volunteer to become "martyrs" for the cause.

It's too delicious to think that their own social media deceptions have been turned against them in this way.  Instead of paying for new recruits to join their terminally deceptive cause, they've funded a more hedonistic and worldly lifestyle for the very women they viewed as potential brides and martyrs!

I hope those ladies planned their disappearance very carefully.  Those they fleeced aren't noted for their forgive-and-forget ways, and they'll be looking for them.

Peter