Moscow food thief caught by Web camera

A couple of Moscow apartment tenants used high-tech equipment to catch a food thief in their apartment where bathroom and kitchen facilities are shared.

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Kommunalki -- the Soviet-era communal apartments in Russia -- were epitomized as the ideal of collective living when conceived 80 years ago by the Bolsheviks.

Valery Fefelkin, 49, was caught red-handed by fellow tenants of apartment 330 for stealing their food from the communal refrigerator, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Fefelkin, who is unemployed, was accused of stealing 10 pounds of pork chops valued at about $50 from a young couple, but he told police he had drunkenly mistaken the couple's pork chops for his own.

However, Andrei and Maria Osipov, rigged a Web camera, which caught Fefelkin carefully wiping his fingerprints off the refrigerator door with a towel. He has been convicted of theft and sentenced to one year of community service.