When the doors of the metro slide open, check the windows and walls of the wagon inside if you are bored with your own identity and a bit short of cash. Next to the usual ones offering registration and sick notes, a new spate of ads have appeared that provide documents and credit without the crunch.

A new Russian driving license costs 17,000 rubles ($725). But what about the conviction for drink driving that my irresponsible younger Slavic brother has? Not even a pause from Alisa, a woman who sleeps the deep sleep of those who couldn't give a toss about fake driving licenses. The same price, she said.

All Alisa needed was a copy of my passport. Not even the passport itself. Hearing this, I thought my imaginative brother out of existence, envisaged sticking a picture on a passport downloaded from the Internet, and voila, a Russian driving license.

They sell driving licenses for a few dozen rubles in a kiosk nearby, but Alisa is almost certainly better as the kiosk ones have Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's mugs in the picture. You only pay the money on delivery so Alisa must be fairly confident of passing muster with the licenses.

Now all I need is some money for a car. Just to the side of Alisa's ad was an ad that offered to provide all the documents needed to get credit.

A younger voice than Alisa explained. What do you need to get money? A well-paid job and the documents to prove this. For a mere 9,000 rubles, Alisa II gets you a job at a firm that puts you on their books and signs and stamps all the bits of paper that are normally required.

"It's all legal," said Alisa II, confidently.

She really seemed to believe it, too. So you have a job at a place you have never heard of and will never visit and as you trot off to the bank to get your money, you can be sure that your back is covered. If the bank checks up on you, they guarantee that the firm will back you up.

"Oh yes, he works here. Speak to him? Now? No, you've just missed him, he right this second walked out the door."

There are a number of these firms with dead souls with low credit ratings on their books, she said. Construction and food processing firms are one of the types of industries you can pretend to work in, probably because it is easier to hide in companies with a large number of employees.

The scam has produced loans of up to 3 million rubles, she said without boasting. They can even help you get mortgages.