A resident of Novosibirsk worked in Sevastopol as a courier for remote scammers

It has been previously established that an 18-year-old resident of Novosibirsk found an offer to work as a courier in the chat of one of the telegram channels. In correspondence with an anonymous administrator, he discussed the conditions of the upcoming activities, agreed to cooperate and, on his instructions, went to the Crimean Peninsula, where he settled in one of the Simferopol hotels.

Over the next few days, following the instructions of his handlers, he arrived at the addresses indicated to him, handed over to senior citizens a homemade form from the non-existent “department for combating financial crimes” with a requirement to transfer savings for declaration, collected bundles of cash, and then transferred the money stolen by fraud to accounts controlled by the scammers. At the same time, he kept 5% of each amount received. Before his visits, the victims received calls from unknown persons, introducing themselves as employees of various government departments, and convincing them of the urgent need to “check the money to ensure it is not involved in the financing of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Thus, the courier managed to steal 640 thousand rubles from two pensioners from Simferopol and Yalta— the details of the story were announced in the press service of the Government of Sevastopol.

During a trip to Sevastopol, during a similar attempt to take almost 680 thousand rubles from an 83-year-old local man, the attacker was detained. As it turned out, before his arrival, the victim’s friend contacted the police and suspected that his friend had become a victim of deception. The scammers’ accomplice said that he came to Hero City to make criminal money.

Currently, a criminal case under Part 3 of Art. 30, part 4 art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Fraud”. The sanction of the article provides for punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of up to ten years. The defendant was chosen as a preventive measure in the form of detention.

source: press service of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the city of Sevastopol