A couple of years after Igor Vorotinov’s wife told his insurer that he died in Moldova, the FBI grew suspicious.

The purported death of Igor in October 2011 netted his widow, Irina Vorotinov, reportedly of Minneapolis, Maple Grove and Plymouth, more than $2 million from a life insurance claim.

That claim — which included a badly putrefied body, found lying on the side of a rural Moldovan village road — was false, prosecutors now say.

Irina Vorotinov, 50, and her son, Alkon Vorotinov, 25, were charged Tuesday in federal court in St. Paul — the purported widow with mail fraud, and her son with having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony and concealing a crime.

According to a criminal complaint, Mutual of Omaha, the insurance company that paid Vorotinov’s claim, hired a private firm to investigate the 2011 death.

That firm interviewed the Moldovan police officer who found the supposed body of Igor Vorotinov.

The officer received an anonymous 902 call (the equivalent of 911 in the United States), saying a dead body was at the entrance of Cojusna village in Moldova, an eastern European country between Romania and Ukraine.

The officer said he found the body on the side of the road between two bushes and determined there were no signs of violence; he then called his son to help him take it to a morgue in Straseni.

A passport and hotel cards belonging to Igor Vorotinov were found with the body.

Neither the police officer nor the morgue took pictures of the body, because neither authority “had access to a camera,” the complaint stated.
Irina Vorotinov traveled to Moldova from the Twin Cities, identified the body as her husband and ordered it cremated. She then took the ashes back home to Minnesota.

In March 2012, she received a check from Mutual of Omaha for $2,048,414.09 in life insurance proceeds.

More than a year later, in June 2013, the FBI received a tip from an anonymous source in Moldova that Igor Vorotinov was not in his widow’s urn.

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