Woman arrested for selling dolls

VILNIUS - Lithuanian police have put a stop to a strange scam thought up by 52-year-old Jurate Pacesiene-Kiauniene, a resident of the northern Lithuanian city of Panevezys. The woman allegedly defrauded businesspeople for almost a year.

The woman, operating under an assumed identity, offered a profitable enterprise to Lithuania's wealthy set. She sold dolls produced in the town of Birzai costing $20 to her victims for upwards of $200. She told them they could make much more by selling the dolls to a collector living in Belgium.

Police claim she made about $15,000 by selling the cheap dolls produced for children to gullible businesspeople in the Lithuanian cities of Kaunas, Alytus and Siauliai. She may have had more customers in Panevezys.

Pacesiene-Kiauniene operated without fear of being discovered, since her victims easily came to terms with the fact that they had been had. None of the business-people wanted to report the scheme to the police because it would mean admitting they were easily taken advantage of.

Police in Siauliai began a formal criminal fraud investigation of the doll transactions on April 12. Cases have been opened in Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city, and Alytus, a smaller rural town west of Vilnius.

Pacesiene-Kiauniene has been placed under house arrest.