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Brothers in Siberia Save Up for 14 Years to Hire Hit Man

Two brothers in western Siberia who saved up for 14 years to hire a hit man have been arrested, LifeNews reported Monday.

Following a quarrel with their acquaintance 14 years ago, the brothers, now 32 and 33, decided to have the man killed, the news agency cited local police as saying.

Unable to afford a hit man at the time, the brothers from the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous district spent the next decade and a half biding their time, squirreling away money until they could afford the 150,000-ruble ($2,790) fee, the report said.

On receiving what appeared to be a photo of the victim's dead body, the brothers handed over the first 50,000-ruble installment to the hit man — withholding the remaining 100,000 rubles until they saw the corpse for themselves at the funeral — at which point they were arrested, police said.

Little did they know that investigators, having got wind of the planned hit, had cooperated with the target to fake the killing, LifeNews reported. They made the man up to resemble a dead body, before sending over the photograph as "proof" from the alleged hit man, who was in fact an undercover law enforcement officer.

A criminal case has been opened against the brothers, the report said.

Hiring hit men is not an uncommon practice in Russia. In May, the general director of a tube-rolling company in Moscow narrowly escaped an attempt on his life by a suspected hit man.

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