Border guards in Russia’s north west last week arrested a man who had set up a bogus border outpost with Finland and taken thousands of euros from migrants for what they thought was a journey through the woods to the European Union.

The man, who was only identified as a citizen of one of the former Soviet Union republics, put up border posts in the forest outside St Petersburg and charged four men from South Asia more than 10,000 euros (£8,400) for his services for smuggling them into neighbouring Finland, Russia’s Border Guard Service said on Wednesday.

Russia’s 1,340-kilometer border with Finland mostly runs across sparsely populated areas in the forest, offering a relatively easy way for migrants to get into the European Union.

The Russian Border Guard Service said that the conman took the migrants on a trip out of town and led them to the bogus Russian-Finnish border where he left them.

The conman apparently took the trouble to fake the migrant journey so meticulously that he even carried a dingy with him.

The Komsomolskya Pravda daily said that the four men were from Sri Lanka and that they were detained when they reached a real Russian border guard outpost.