thieves impersonate social workers, policemen, museum workers and thus obtain access to old veterans' homes without violence. A massive theft from the Central Armed Forces Museum was identified in 1994 and remains unsolved. In November 2006 Russian government agency requested Sotheby's to halt an upcoming sale of 11 Soviet military awards presumed to be stolen. The medals were later returned to Russia through Interpol. The Central Armed Forces Museum admitted that the medals could have been stolen from them. December 23, 1999, thieves stole the collection of Michel da Vincha, a French citizen and notable collector living in Moscow, which included rare awards of the Russian Empire. Although the police soon recovered the stolen treasures, they were still not returned to Da Vincha. According to Trud, there were two surges in medal thefts in 2000s. The latest one occurred in the first half of 2008, apparently continues as of August 2008 and has not been analyzed completely yet. Victims range from World War II heroes like Yekaterina Demina, the only female Marine of that war, to symphony conductor Veronica Dudarova. A concurrent crime wave was reported in Minsk and Vitebsk, Belarus. The previous crime wave peaked between 2003 and 2006; most public cases include: In 2004 Moscow prosecution detained someone Yury Tikhonov who faced indictment for multiple counts of medal theft, including robbing fighter ace Anton Yakimenko. The alleged thief visited war veterans in Russia and Belarus disguised as a photographer, and quietly replaced their genuine medals with fakes. Prosecution asserted that a large number of similar crimes remained unknown to the victims due to the quality of counterfeit medals. In 2006 Tikhonov's modus operandi was repeated in Ukraine by a 30-year-old psychology student, also using photography and counterfeit replicas. The unidentified thief was caught in Rivne Oblast and indicted in 15 counts of theft. An Order of the British Empire was stolen from its owner, educator Elena Nemirovskaya, in July 2004. Nemirovskaya, Teodor Shanin and Mstislav Rostropovich were the three living Russian recipients of OBE, and Nemirovskaya's award was the only one physically present in Russia. In 2005 Moscow prosecution indicted Alexander Karmanov in multiple cases of fraud. According to prosecution, in 1993 Karmanov, a seasoned convict who already served a total of 17 years in prison, organized a properly licensed military "museum" - to circumvent the law prohibiting trading in state awards. Karmanov, presenting himself as a legitimate