Nowadays, Dolina effect has become a topic of great interest to many people around the world. Whether we are talking about Dolina effect in the context of politics, technology, history, or even everyday life, it is undeniable that this topic has captured the attention of a wide audience. In this article we are going to explore and analyze in detail the different facets of Dolina effect, with the aim of providing a comprehensive and detailed view on this topic. From its origins to its relevance today, through its implications and possible future developments, this article seeks to shed light on Dolina effect and offer an enriching perspective for all those interested in delving deeper into this fascinating topic.

The Dolina effect (Russian: эффект Долиной) describes a crisis on the Russian real estate market that started in fall 2025. The term gained wide prominence in media when Larisa Dolina, a Russian singer, won a high-profile court case related to her sale of an upscale apartment in the city centre of Moscow. Dolina fell for a scam and gave away the money she received from an innocent buyer, and when the singer realised the mistake, she sued to recover her property. In fraud cases like this one, Russian courts often grant the recovery motion but do not order the money back. This leaves the buyer with neither property nor money even if the buyer was honest—which is what happened in this case. This outcome highlighted criminals' abuse of the Civil Code of Russia to fraudulently dispossess property buyers with the sanction of Russian courts, which are favourable to sellers. Consequently, Russian mass media coined the term "Dolina scheme" (Russian: схема Долиной).[2][3]
The notoriety of the case disrupted the secondary real estate market in the country as buyers started to become more suspicious of sellers. The scheme often employs pensioners (hence another nickname for the scam, "babushka scheme", бабушкина схема)[4][5], so trust in elderly sellers collapsed. Clients increasingly required additional steps to hedge against the scam, such as inviting additional witnesses, making extra background checks and modifying sale deeds. Dolina herself has suffered a strong hit to her reputation due to the association with the unjust enrichment scheme.
Larisa Dolina, a Russian singer who was then 68 years old, had a 236 m2 (2,540 sq ft) five-bedroom apartment, located in the prestigious district of Khamovniki in central Moscow. Prosecutors estimated its market value at ₽138 million (about $1.55 million at the time of the case).[6] Dolina listed her apartment for ₽130 million through a real estate agent. Polina Lurie (Полина Лурье), an unsuspecting buyer, visited with a realtor and then spoke to Dolina herself in the apartment. During the conversation, the buyer ultimately negotiated the price of ₽112 million if paid in cash only.[7] According to the trial court ruling, the duo signed a preliminary contract in May 2025, when the buyer paid a ₽1 million deposit, and the rest was paid as the final contract was signed the next month inside an Alfa-Bank branch. The women gave the money to a safe deposit box,[8] from which Dolina later withdrew the cash.[7]
In August 2024, the singer declared that she fell victim to fraudsters.[9] According to Dolina, in April, scammers purporting to be officers for the Rosfinmonitoring (a governmental agency combatting financial crime) and the Federal Security Service (FSB) convinced her that criminals wanted to steal her money and take out a mortgage on her apartment.[10][11] They pressured her to hand over her apartment but assured that the deed would be "a fiction" and that it was monitored by the security services. They also urged to transfer her funds to "safe accounts" and not to tell anyone about her "involvement" with law enforcement.[12] Dolina then gave the money from the apartment sale, her own savings, and even money borrowed from friends, totalling ₽175 million, to the fraudsters.[12] BBC News Russian speculated that Dolina was probably the unnamed biggest fraud victim of 2024, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs data, as the amount of money in that announcement was roughly the same as in this case.[11]
The singer realized she was swindled out of millions of rubles after the scammers claimed that criminals apparently took out another loan with a different property as collateral,[10] and after she reportedly saw "five sturdy guys" trying to repossess the apartment.[13] Dolina was supposed to hand over the keys in July. However, she first told the buyer that she was on a concert tour, then stopped replying to Lurie's calls and messages, and ultimately refused to move out.[10] The singer sued to recover the apartment from Lurie; Lurie counter-sued to evict the former owner.[11]

Article 178 of the Russian Civil Code allows deals to be declared null and void if a party fell victim to deception while signing the agreement and would not have done that had they known about the true state of affairs. Attorneys for Lurie argued the court should not invalidate the deal as there were no issues apparent during negotiation and the plaintiff seemed to behave appropriately. Counsel for Dolina disagreed and believed that the singer was, in fact, deceived. They also suggested that Lurie did not do her due diligence when buying the property, as the low price did not raise red flags for her and she did not ask for a health report from a psychiatrist.[10][b] A report by a court-appointed expert witness in the parallel criminal trial found that the singer was "mentally unstable" at the time of the deal;[18] she refused a similar evaluation for the civil trial. According to lawyer Vladimir Mnatsakanov, who was not representing the defendant, the criminal trial expert report was worthless in the civil trial because Russian law does not allow to use criminal expert witness reports before the verdict is announced;[7] however, another lawyer, Natalia Sivonina, said that the report was valid because the defendant did not ask for a specific one in the civil case. Sivonina added that while it is somewhat unusual for the buyer to let the seller stay on the property when they have another place to live, it was reasonable for Lurie to rely on the singer's public fame and her status as a trusted person for President Vladimir Putin's electoral campaigns.[19]
The district court in Khamovniki agreed with the plaintiff and ordered the property returned. The court reasoned, however, that Lurie was not eligible for restitution because it could not "definitively establish the pecuniary character of the deal".[8][13] It suggested that she could sue the scammers instead (even though she likely wouldn't qualify as a victim of fraud). Appeals to the Moscow City Court and the Second Cassational Court affirmed the ruling, which left Lurie with no money, no apartment and a very hard, and far from guaranteed, prospect of recovering stolen funds.[10] The Supreme Court of Russia scheduled the cassation hearing for 16 December 2025.[20]
Dolina long maintained silence about the case, but broke it on 5 December on air of the popular Let Them Talk talk show, long after the popular backlash started. The star promised to return the money to the buyer but admitted she didn't have any at that moment.[21] The loan would be paid out in installments stretching over three years, without accounting for interest, inflation or other losses. Dolina also urged her critics to donate money to Lurie. Both Lurie and the public refused her proposals;[22] the buyer's lawyer dismissed the proposal as unacceptably one-sided.[23]
Prosecutors indicted four suspects in relation to the crime. All pled not guilty to grand fraud charges and denied knowing that the funds were used for illicit purposes.[6] Angela Tsyryulnikova, one of the defendants who was also implicated in several similar scams in the Moscow metropolitan area, took the money bag from Dolina but claimed she was not aware of its contents and that by doing what she did, she unwittingly acted in another criminal enterprise.[10] In November 2025, a trial court in the Moscow suburb of Balashikha sentenced all defendants to four to seven years of corrective colony and fines of ₽900,000 to ₽1 million.[24] The court found that Tsyryulnikova took the money from Dolina and exchanged it for Tether cryptocurrency, while three other defendants held the "safe accounts" that Dolina transferred the money to and cashed out some of the funds.[25] The singer asked the scammers to return the money she paid them, but the court declined to review the motion.[10]
Dolina's case increased awareness of loopholes that scammers may exploit to defraud property buyers.
The scheme additionally exploits three factors. The first is the fact that Russian courts treat pensioners more favourably due to the general opinion of them as a vulnerable social group. Thus scammers disproportionately employ elderly people in their scheme, who may or may not be accomplices.[13] They coach the pensioners to not appear weird in front of realtors and notaries and to corroborate their story when appropriate. Judicial practice is also favourable to the elderly, as restitution is often ordered in one way only - the property returns to the original owner but the money stays.[26] In fact, Dolina's case is far from isolated and not the first one. Several analyses cited over a dozen rulings in total in which unsuspecting buyers paid for apartments, were dispossessed but were not compensated for the loss.[13][10][26] Daniil Filippov, a senior officer at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, said that about 2/5 of court cases ended up with courts ordering a one-way restitution of apartments, as opposed to another 2/5 where the court ordered to return to the status quo and the rest of cases when courts did not find the deals fraudulent.[10] Vedomosti calculated that Russians lost at least 433 million rubles in 2025 alone due to the scam, out of an estimated total of over 8 billion rubles lost due to unauthorised apartment sales.[1]
Secondly, the law prioritises reflecting the will of the seller over the extent of the buyer's due diligence.[26] For example, if the court overturns the deal, it may explain that while the seller did show on paper that they intended to sell the apartment, they were unlikely to really want to sell their only apartment.[13] Courts also tend to treat the "tricked" seller's testimony as more persuasive than that of the buyer.[27] Sivonina said that the principle of good-faith buyer (article 302 of the Civil Code) does not apply in cases when there is no dispute about the previous owner of the property; in the Dolina's case, it might apply to whomever Lurie sold the apartment afterwards but never to Lurie herself.[19] Therefore, buyers are unlikely to easily recover the money or the apartment once the "fraudulent acquisition" case goes to court.[28] Recording the deal on video, certifying the deal at the notary office and ensuring that the psychiatric report does not show issues is not likely to prevent the scam.[29]
Finally, if the buyer does not do due diligence, courts will not generally reverse the transaction, even if (and possibly particularly if)[28] the seller's conduct is suspect - such as selling their property without having another place to live, urging to buy the property as fast as possible and/or selling it for an unusually low price.[10]
References in Russian media about the Dolina-style court cases appeared as early as 2 October 2025,[30] though TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, cited search query data at Yandex that suggested a spike in interest back in July 2025.[31] The notoriety of this case disrupted the secondary real estate market in the country because the scheme inherently undermines the presumption that deals have consequences.[5][32] According to a survey by VTsIOM, a state-run pollster, 62% of Russians who planned to buy an apartment were afraid of being left penniless due to being victims of fraud.[24]
The Russian Guild of Realtors noted that in 2025, there was an 15-20% increase in court cases in which plaintiffs wanted to return property after being scammed.[24] Delovoy Peterburg stressed that elderly complainants were increasingly going to court, so buyers became very wary of sellers above 50 years old.[29] Izvestiya disagreed with the assessment, citing court data suggesting that the number of similar cases actually significantly decreased from 2024 levels in the lead-up to the case.[33] Slava, a fellow singer, complained that she was unable to sell her apartment because people stopped trusting celebrities.[34] On the other hand, other Russian pop starts, including Philipp Kirkorov, Vladimir Presnyakov Jr. and Zara, supported Dolina. Kirkorov in particular expressed the opinion that the "trampling on celebrities" is "people's favourite pastime" but it should stop.[35]
Clients took extra precautions when dealing with the newly suspect categories, such as requiring the presence of relatives or of a psychiatrist. Delovoy Peterburg and Izvestia noted an uptick of visits to notaries in Saint Petersburg, but otherwise did not find major disruption to the secondary market.[29][33] Lawyers retained by buyers reported that their clients, likely influenced by media content exaggerating the scale of the issue, suddenly grew more paranoid. Attorneys also said that they needed to spend significantly more time to calm them down and to explain every single clause of the deed. Some media personalities even circulated a conspiracy theory suggesting that the whole controversy was orchestrated by property developers to increase sales of new apartments.[17] To a lesser extent, the scam also spread to used car sales, which disturbed potential buyers of vehicles.[3][28]
Several changes to the law were floated as a proposed to combat the scam. One, floated by A Just Russia party leader Sergey Mironov, proposes a so-called "cooldown period" of seven days between signing the deed and registering the property at Rosreestr, the agency behind the state registry of real estate ownership. The new bill proposes that the formal switch of ownership will only happen after the money changes hands. The draft law would also ban cash deals in real estate and require that the seller offer a notary-certified declaration that they have another place to live.[36] As of early December 2025, State Duma started debating the bill.[37] The Duma also created a parliamentary working group aiming to protect good-faith buyers from seller's shenanigans, to which Dolina was invited.[38] The office of the Prosecutor General suggested to target "suspicious" transactions with the cooldown.[37] Rosreestr itself proposed another safety mechanism, which suggests that the seller must first return the money before asking to get back the property.[39]
Dolina's case caused public uproar against the singer, even though she was not in on the scam,[11] because the general public's perception was that she used her wealth and connections to throw innocent Polina Lurie under the bus.[5] Indeed, a poll of 32,000 people by Lenta.ru suggested that Russians overwhelmingly disapproved of Dolina's behaviour.[40] Out of 1.1 million mentions of Dolina in the media in the press and social media in November, most were negative - and the criticism skyrocketed by the end of the month as the case's public notoriety spread.[24]
Novaya Gazeta published an article suggesting that the Dolina's case was an "ideal trigger" for the general population due to the combination of three factors: the presence of a privileged "rich star" who becomes a natural scapegoat because she is seen as more powerful; the relatable concept of searching an apartment on the secondary market - and the outrage at losing it; and the background fear and distrust of the government and the real estate market. It also didn't help that Dolina's public behaviour, according to the newspaper, was often arrogant.[32] Forbes Russia cited public relations specialists as saying that Dolina's controversy was more personal to an average Russian than those of other celebrities because it revolved around their own property and not just public morality issues. The response to the outcry, according to these people, was a "complete failure of crisis communication", and her interview on Let Them Talk may have exacerbated the problem due to the appearance of lacking empathy to other victims of the scam.[24]
Many users took to the social media to express their disgust, to the point that it became an online lynch mob.[32] Counsel for the singer filed a criminal complaint due to death threats targeted at her.[41] A new trend started on social media ridiculing the ruling by arguing that courts should finance non-essential or outright extravagant expenditures because the owner "was acting under the influence of fraudsters" when selling their apartment.[42] Some Internet users christened Dolina as a "babushka zero" case (by analogy with patient zero);[43] others started recalling Dolina's older controversies, such as an excerpt from a talk show in which she claims that the police do not pull her over because she has a "special document".[24] Muscovites started bringing joke talismans (slippers, candles, keys and satirical notes) to the apartment in Khamovniki.[43][44]
Dolina saw several instances of what could be termed cancel culture applied to her.[5] Stoloto, the largest distributor of Russian state lotteries, deleted the Telegram post that featured her performance in a real estate sweepstake ad after backlash from Internet users and a "bot attack".[45][46] The Pushkin Café, an upscale restaurant on Moscow's main street, Tverskaya, deleted mentions about the New Year's Eve concert she was scheduled to give and for which admission cost ₽95,000 per person; other concerts saw a surge of people returning their tickets. Several other companies declared they would stop servicing Dolina on their premises. While her producer earlier claimed that she suffered no revenue losses from the scandal, according to an estimate of Nikita Prokhorov, CEO of a public relations company, Dolina was set to lose over ₽300 million of annual income.[24] For example, the organisation with ties to Larisa Dolina's daughter, Angelina, failed to secure a presidential grant worth ₽76 million that was meant to help its efforts as a talent agency for new entrants at the Russian pop scene.[47]
Natalia Kozlovskaya, head of the Russian language academic department at Herzen University, was quoted by TASS as saying that the "Dolina effect" is likely to appear in dictionaries compiling neologisms, but she said that the word will probably not stay relevant after the scandal goes down.[31] Forbes Russia, on the other hand, cited the founder of a public relations agency as saying that the word in fact stay relevant and will have a similar prominence to expressions like Streisand effect.[24]