This is a diabolical but relatively easy scam to pull off. Take an old ambulance vehicle, leave the exterior unaltered but turn the interior into a VIP lounge and offer a ride to businessmen who want to skip traffic.
Just activate the siren and abuse the courtesy of motorists who scramble out the way for the good of saving lives.
Even cops will be loathe to pull over an ambulance to verify the authenticity of its mission because if it's a real emergency then every second counts.
But now a bunch of thugs in Russia have put lives at risk by forcing cops to do exactly that.
It started with adverts on the internet being discovered, which offered such 'emergency' cruises through Moscow's gridlock for a princely sum of 6000 roubles (R1850) an hour.
Then some cops stopped a suspicious-looking ambulance driver and upon inspecting the vehicle they found some bigwigs sitting in a cabin that would befit a limo.
People who were clearly too important to sit in traffic with everyone else.
Source: Izvestiya via National Post