Crimeans gave more than 60 million rubles to scammers in a week

From February 24 to March 1 in Crimea, 46 people became victims of remote scammers, losing about 62 million rubles

Schemes used by cyber fraudsters over the past week:

• criminals pose as employees of government agencies, financial organizations or security services, trying to find out personal information or force the victim to transfer or hand over funds;

• scammers promise quick earnings on cryptocurrency or marketplaces. Victims are persuaded to transfer funds to accounts supposedly intended for investment, after which the money disappears and communication with the scammers is lost;

• installing third-party applications and following links.

“Remember him? Recently he died in a traffic accident, I sympathize with you. Watch the video…» – scammers have been sending such messages all over Russia lately. We also reached the Crimeans.

Senders are from the contact list. The video is accompanied by a malicious link, clicking on which can result in material damage for the recipient.

Thus, a 63-year-old villager contacted the police in the city of Dzhankoy and lost 23 thousand rubles. He followed the link, downloaded a file, and then noticed that all savings had been debited from his account.

Curiosity also cost money for a 43-year-old resident of the Kirovsky district. By opening the link attached to the message, the woman gave the scammers access to her banking application, after which 11 thousand rubles disappeared from there.

Larger financial losses for Crimeans were calls from employees of various “security services” and “anti-fraud” scammers.

A 74-year-old resident of Simferopol lost a large sum of money by trusting an unknown person who introduced himself to her over the phone as “an anti-fraud security officer.” Under the pretext of recalculating and declaring the pension, he convinced the woman to transfer cash to the “special agent”, and do not forget to say the code word. The pensioner handed over 1 million 700 thousand rubles to an unknown woman whom the scammers sent to the victim’s apartment. It should be noted that everything happened in the dark, and the elderly resident of Simferopol did not even see the courier’s face.

A 79-year-old resident of Yevpatoria also fell into a similar trap. She gave 800 thousand rubles to the scammers’ accomplice. However, the woman remembered the courier well and gave his clear description to the police.

In Simferopol, using the same scheme for declaring funds, scammers deceived a 90-year-old woman. A “special agency employee” called her on a landline phone, after which the pensioner took a package to the gate, which contained 1 million 800 thousand rubles in national and foreign currency. The victim also described the courier to the police.

A 35-year-old Simferopol resident transferred over one million to the scammers. In personal messages on the messenger, a “law enforcement officer,” under the pretext of not bringing the man to justice for financing a banned organization, forced him to “hide” the money in a temporary account in order to ward off suspicion. The deceived citizen sent all his savings to the scammers, for which he had to make 12 transactions through an ATM. Having received what he wanted, the attacker deleted all correspondence.

Scammers continue to use a well-established scheme with computer games that are popular among teenagers. This is how the mother of an 11-year-old girl who was passionate about a video game contacted the Yalta police. The daughter, deceived by unknown people, transferred 136 thousand rubles through her mother’s personal banking application account to purchase electronic cards to continue the game — the “administrators” convinced her to keep everything secret, and the money would be returned.

How to protect yourself from such threats?

To avoid such troubles, it is important to follow a few simple rules:

1. Never share your personal information with strangers, especially card numbers, verification codes and passwords.

2. Check the reliability of online resources before making online purchases.

3. Be careful with suspicious emails and messages containing links or downloads.

4. Don’t believe in “safe accounts” – IT’S A SCAM!

5. Don’t panic – real law enforcement officials and banks do not require money transfers.

If you have become a victim of scammers, immediately report it to the police using the single number 102 or submit a written statement to any nearest police station.

source: press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Republic of Crimea