[Photo:  Basil Cathedral in Moscow, Russia]

George Urumov, a former trader with Moscow-based Otkritie Financial, his wife Yulia Balk and a couple of colleagues had managed through an intricate scheme to siphon nearly $150 million from Otkritie. They did so through fraudulent Argentine bond trades and bonus manipulation.

Urumov was convicted by a U.K. jury and sentenced to 12 years in jail – one of the longest sentences ever received by a banker for fraud in the U.K. His wife was acquitted by the jury. Vladimir Gersamia, an accomplice formerly with Threadneedle Asset Management, was given a 7-year jail term.

The tale of how Urumov, now 37, went from being a star trader whose CV boasted stints at HSBC Holdings and Lehman Brothers to a criminal entangled in what a judge 3 years ago dubbed "a brazen and carefully orchestrated deceit" begins and ends with greed.

STEALING MONEY.    The year before Urumov started stealing money from Moscow-based Otkritie, he earned $2 million including bonuses as executive director for emerging markets fixed-income at Knight Capital Europe in London. Born in in 1979, in Ossetia (then part of the Soviet Union), and an alumnus of the Cass Business School and London School of Economics, Urumov made a name for himself as a nimble and clever trader. He managed a 5-member team at Knight Capital and was revered among peers in the City of London.

As successful as he was, Urumov had a bigger reward in mind – and it started with joining Otkritie to expand its fixed-income division to London.

$25 MILLION BONUS.    Underpinning his audacious pursuit of wealth, Urumov reportedly requested a $50 million signing-on bonus from then Otkritie CEO Roman Lokhov in exchange for moving his team at Knight Capital to the Russian lender. Lokhov eventually agreed to half that amount, assuming Urumov would split the sum evenly with the 4 bond traders he was bringing with him.

But Urumov had a cunning plan, according to testimony heard during the 4-month trial. He kept more than $20 million for himself - of which $12 million went to pay off bribes to 2 Otkritie employees who helped him get the job. One of the men, Sergey Kondratyuk, was convicted in Switzerland of fraud and released in 2013 after serving a short prison term. Prosecutors believe the other, Ruslan Pinaev, is living in Israel and has so far evaded extradition to Switzerland.

Then, barely 5 weeks into his new post, Urumov and his colleagues started telling their bosses they were trading Argentine warrants, a type of derivative, in dollars when in actuality the deals were executed in pesos. The deception enabled Urumov to swindle nearly $40 million for himself.

Fradulent Trades.    The Argentine currency was running at about 4 to the dollar when the trades took place in 2011, so Otkritie paid 4 times too much, and the men walked away with $100 million of illicit earnings. The jury heard how they covered their tracks by changing the currency listed in electronic records and even convinced Gersamia at Threadneedle to confirm the false valuation.

The money was funneled through offshore bank accounts and the men splurged their ill-gotten gains on Ferraris, pink and yellow diamonds, and luxury properties. Urumov and Gersamia were arrested and charged in 2015 along with former Otkritie trader Alessandro Gherzi, who was cleared of any wrongdoing last week. The Russian bank, meanwhile, has recovered more than $100 million in damages.