NEWS

Anna Arutunyan

A criminal gang is believed to be behind an imaginative but unsuccessful effort to wrestle a fortune from a Moscow supermarket.

Police believe a professional sumo wrestler was involved in shifting a 90kg ATM from a store in West Degunino, in the northern suburbs.

But this Hole in the Wall gang were unable to salt away their ill-gotten gains after their getaway car was caught by the cops, the official police website reported.

Now police are trying to find out whether the wrestler was an unwitting accomplice or part of an elaborate planned raid.

Another man, who helped the wrestler disconnect the machine, later tried to take the rap himself. He told officers that his hefty assistant had believed he was merely helping to collect his own machine and was unaware of any criminal intent.

But other witnesses suggest that was not the case. Police believe a criminal gang may be involved and questioned both suspects about their employment status.

The alert was raised on Friday morning by a cashier in the store when he saw the little-and-large duo walk in and silently start taking the machine.

When the storeworker tried to intervene, one of the men reportedly said: "Keep quiet, or it will be worse!"

One of the men, who turned out to be a professional sumo wrestler from a former Soviet republic, carried off the 90 kg ATM machine on his back.

There were 25,320 rubles inside.

The police were called, and they caught the pair as they tried to escape with the machine in a black BMW.