1914 - 1969
legendary Soviet swindler who deceived 26 Stalinist people's commissars in 1946-1947
According to Vaisman's story, one day a large Soviet civil servant, rushing to work, pushed the disabled Vaisman so that he fell, and did not even apologize. After this, Weissman decided to take revenge. He visited ministries and introduced himself as a fellow soldier Vasily Stalin and asked for money, clothes, food, housing. Among the people's commissars he deceived were the people's commissar of the USSR river fleet Zosima Shashkov, People's Commissar of the Forestry Industry of the USSR Mikhail Saltykov and many other prominent political figures of that time.
From the life of a trickster
He was married to citizen Osmon in the city of Orekhovo-Zuevo MO, and also to Sheburshova, who worked as an attendant at the Orekhovo station (with her help, Vaisman even managed to steal a carriage with goods), with whom he had a child. The two hero stars worn by Weissman were made by counterfeiters. The difficulty in catching the trickster was that he, having no personal property, traveled all over the country, constantly changing his location. Vaisman was arrested while trying to deceive the USSR Minister of Heavy Industry Alexandra Efremova, since J.V. Stalin personally intervened in the case, demanding the speedy capture of the criminal, and therefore the corresponding directives describing Vaisman’s signs were sent to the Ministries. He was sentenced to 9 years in prison. After serving his sentence, he personally came to the MUR and stated that he was no longer going to steal. Weissman kept his promise. Investigators helped Vaisman get a job at a home for the disabled in the Orenburg region, where he ended his life, simultaneously imprisoning the leadership of the home for fraud.
Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Ivan Serov personally reported on the investigation of the crimes of this swindler to Joseph Stalin. And the materials of this unusual and high-profile case were kept under the heading “Top Secret” for many years. Veniamin Vaisman managed to extract money in 1944-47 ( and even an apartment) of 10 ministers and dozens of other Soviet bureaucrats. They gave him the money themselves, seeing in front of them a legless disabled man, twice Hero of the Soviet Union.
Veniamin Borisovich Vaisman, who was born in Zhitomir in 1914, had many surnames: Trakhtenberg, Rabinovich, Oslon, Zilbershtein... For 24 of his 55 years he was engaged in theft. He started with small ones, then moved on to large ones: he even kidnapped entire trains loaded with all kinds of goods. From the age of nine, Veniamin was sent to children's colonies nine times (!), but the clever guy always escaped from there.
He was punished “like an adult” five times, sentenced to prison terms of varying lengths. In a word, Weissman’s life was eventful...
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In the fall of 1946, in the first half of the working day, an unknown person entered the office of the Minister of Food Industry of the Soviet Union, Vasily Petrovich Zotov, briefly knocking on the recently painted door.
"Who are you?"- Comrade Zotov raised his head indignantly. Like any major official, he did not like uninvited guests. His first thought was how did someone even manage to get through the reception area without warning? However, the indignation melted away without a trace, giving way to surprise, as soon as Vasily Petrovich carefully examined the guest.
In the modest, worn uniform of a front-line officer of tank forces, a legless invalid with orders on his chest, among which two Stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union immediately attracted attention, appeared to the minister's gaze. Two!
Then everything happened as follows. The minister kindly received the guest, forgetting about all his affairs, and listened carefully to his story. This man who went through the war was actually a hero. Like Zotov, he was from a small town and worked hard for socialism in his youth. When Hitler treacherously attacked the Soviet Union, the young officer was one of the first to be on the front line. Next to him, Zotov felt timid. He also saw a lot in the war - but more and more in the rear, dealing with evacuations and organizing food supplies.
And when the veteran admitted that extreme need brought him to Comrade Zotov, Vasily Petrovich did everything in his power to help Comrade Kuznetsov, who had been offended by life. He gave him a batch of scarce goods and 9,500 rubles in cash - everything that was in the minister’s safe.
A week later, information about this meeting was already in written form on the desk of the head of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department (MUR). Minister of River Fleet Z.A. Shashkov, Minister of Meat and Dairy Industry I.A. Kuzminykh, Minister coal industry D.G. Onika, Minister of Heavy Engineering N.S. Kazakov, Minister of Finance A.G. Zverev. This impressive list grew by one name, and the MUR investigators developed an involuntary respect for the talented swindler.
To play such a comedy and be able to deceive not one, but more than 10 ministers of the Stalinist government! Detectives who read the details of the visits of the “twice Hero of the Soviet Union” to the ministries were amazed at the cunning of “Comrade Kuznetsov.”
He told some that he pulled wounded comrades out of a burning tank, and with others he shared details of his pre-war career, showing ingenuity in his approaches to ministers. He introduced himself to the Minister of Finance as a former driver of the State Bank, and to the Minister of Agricultural Machinery as a motor mechanic at a tractor plant. The greatest impression on the listeners was made by the story of how a young pilot almost died in the sky, pinched by fascist aces, but was saved by his comrade in arms: Vasily Stalin himself. The name of Samos own son had a hypnotic effect on any official, suppressing any ability to critically assess the situation. Several tens of thousands of rubles went into the cripple’s pocket in just two months. And this is not counting the services provided by the ministries to their guests: from providing a government-owned car to issuing rolls of expensive fabric, food, clothing, etc.
Soon, detectives were able to establish the true identity of “Stalin’s friend” - Veniamin Vaisman, a 33-year-old pickpocket from Ukraine who had seven convictions and had made several escapes from camps. He operated throughout the USSR from Zhitomir (where he was born) to the Urals. Last time he escaped from a camp in the Vologda region in the cold winter of 1944. I came home having lost both legs from frostbite. Disability forced him to switch from pickpocketing to earning food by begging in the offices of senior officials.
While the MUR employees were clarifying the biography of the fraudster, he managed to beat several other major officials and the chairman of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, Vavilov. The latter was so moved by Veniamin’s stories that he even ordered to be supplied with prosthetic legs from the institute at the academy.
The next time Veniamin Vaisman appeared in the office of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Nikolai Semenovich Patolichev, was already in the spring of 1947. The clever “captain and twice Hero of the Soviet Union” decided that it was time for him to get his own apartment.
Within a few days, the Minister of Forestry Industry of the Union, Georgy Orlov, gave Vaisman a note addressed to the Minister of Forestry Industry of the Ukrainian SSR, Philipp Samuylenko:
“The Guard captain of the tank forces... is leaving for permanent residence in Kyiv, and therefore he needs to be provided with furniture for his apartment at the expense of the ministry, and provide one-time cash assistance in the amount of 2,500 rubles.”
Without even a secondary education, Weissman demonstrated miracles of resourcefulness and intelligence in everything related to manipulation and deception. He was extremely clever in ensuring that all the unspoken rules of successful fraud were observed. Knowing how important it was to make the right impression, he used the most powerful ways of the possible: a front-line soldier’s uniform that commands respect and medals. Since Weissman could not put pressure on the all-powerful functionaries with the help of fear, he always chose sympathy and played on the timidity of the nomenklatura, who had not yet lost the remnants of self-criticism, which they subconsciously felt in front of veterans who gave much more for the sake of Victory than they themselves.
That is why any combination played out in a matter of hours and amazing in its impudence was a win-win.
In Kyiv, employees of the Criminal Investigation Department did not find “Captain Kuznetsov”. At this time, Veniamin again went to Moscow, where, after waiting for some time, he came to the already familiar Minister of Heavy Engineering Nikolai Kazakov, who last time awarded the “front-line soldier” the sum of 1,500 rubles. Now we were talking about 2000 rubles. At the end of the conversation, the official issued an appropriate order to issue money. However, as soon as the door closed behind the visitor, the warned Kazakov was already dialing the phone number of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the device. At the cash register, plainclothes officers approached Veniamin Vaisman. The show is over.
During the investigation, Veniamin behaved calmly and with dignity, indicating his high status in the camp world. Without hiding, he described the details of his trips to the ministries, of which there were already 26. Since October 1945, Vaisman traveled around Soviet Union, studying the work of ministries and their structure. He memorized the names of responsible officials and directors, soldered employees, getting facts and information on the spot. He collected information about his future victims and at the same time prepared a legend for his new personality. Weissman bought all kinds of certificates confirming his inventions, obtained certificates and forged Thanksgiving letters. This information, along with names known to the ministers, constantly came up in his conversations, creating an illusion of authenticity among the victims. He took out an officer’s jacket and for a huge amount of money (20 thousand rubles) fake awards along with accompanying documents.
Veniamin Vaisman was eventually sentenced to 9 years in prison. He was released under an amnesty in 1953, after serving five years.
In October 1956, a curious incident occurred at the Kursky railway station in Moscow. The local police department received two tipsy workers and one disabled person. The workers asked the police to help them, since the cripple had stolen 450 rubles from them. In turn, the disabled person shouted that he was a labor veteran and an honored worker, but he was offended and humiliated by accusations of theft. Major Makeev, interested in the scandal, came to look at the heroes of the drama, and he recognized Vaisman in the disabled man. The stolen 450 rubles were found in his prosthesis. Weissman was again convicted and sent to prison for 3 years.
In April 1961, Veniamin Vaisman himself came to the MUR. Having met there with the detectives who had once caught him, the living legend of the world of thieves promised the search officers that he would no longer engage in fraud and theft, since he was already too old for this. Under the patronage of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department, he was placed in a home for disabled war veterans in Pyatigorsk. Vaisman even managed to get himself a pension of 80 rubles. Apparently, he managed to do shady things there too, since he sent his children 100-200 rubles a month.
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His grave is located in one of the Kyiv cemeteries, where Boris Natanovich and Polina Markovna Vaisman are buried behind the same fence. There is also a sign on which it is written: “V.B. Weissman. 1914—1969." This is their son, well-known in criminal and police circles. However, the intrigue is that there is not a pinch of his ashes in the grave. That's why he was a fraudster, so that even after his death he could outsmart everyone.
The answer to this strange situation lies in the circumstances of the death of a “state-scale swindler.” The fact is that Vaisman died alone, in a home for disabled tuberculosis patients in the North Caucasus, located in the city of Grozny.
“When the telegram arrived about Benjamin’s death,- recalls Inna Oslon, - my grandmother, him Native sister, feared for her diseased heart, and my mother went to pick up the body. At the establishment, she was told that she had arrived late, that corpses were not stored there for so long, and that the body of the disabled Vaisman had already been given to science - for anatomical research. And my grandmother’s mother said that she buried her.”
