MOSCOW, July 5 (RAPSI) - A court in Russia's Bashkortostan has sentenced a US citizen and his Chechen partner to various terms in prison for extorting an Ufa widow's inheritance worth $4.35 million.

US citizen Gennady Yelchev and Chechen resident Ramzan Vagapov, the founder of the Kavkaz stabilization fund, extorted money from the widow of a businessman after she inherited bank accounts and property in Russia and abroad from her husband, the Federal Security Service Department for Bashkortostan reported.

"Yelchev called her in February 2012 and introduced himself as the director of the Moscow office of a US company and an advisor to the first deputy prime minister of Chechnya. He said that a $3 million loan that her late husband had taken from this company with 10% interest had matured in 2010, with the total amount including interest coming to $4.5 million as of December 2010," the press release reads.

Yelchev said the debt has been sold to Chechnya, demanded the return of the money and threatened the woman with violence.

Yelchev and Vagapov were arrested while they were accepting the money. Yelchev was carrying ID stating that he was an advisor to the first deputy prime minister of Chechnya, and Vagapov's ID said he was an assistant of a Federation Council member. The security service has yet not said whether the documents were forged.

The Kirovsky District Court in Ufa convicted both men of extortion and sentenced Yelchev to seven years and four months in a high-security prison, and Vagapov to seven years.