In just one day, six residents of Sevastopol gave half a million rubles to online scammers

CrimeaPRESS reports:

— For what? — Just!

Sevastopol police warns: remote scammers continue to steal money from gullible citizens. Over the past 24 hours, six residents of the city have suffered from the illegal activities of malefactors: four women and two men, aged 38 to 68 years. Fraudsters carried out the theft of funds under the pretext of protecting a bank account, a short-term loan on behalf of acquaintances, and online purchases.

Strangers called three women in a popular messenger using the logo of a regional commercial bank, pretending to be employees of a financial institution and, under the pretext of protecting bank accounts, convinced their victims to transfer all their savings to settlement accounts dictated by them. Having believed the scammers, the victims aged 68, 66 and 40 followed their instructions and lost a total of 557 thousand rubles.

In two other cases, a 49-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman received instant messenger messages from alleged acquaintances asking them to borrow 36,000 and 40,000 rubles, respectively, for a short time. The victims, thinking that they were helping their friends financially, transferred the required amounts to the scammers— reported in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the city of Sevastopol.

The last victim of remote criminals was a 40-year-old man who found an advertisement on a trading platform on the Internet for the sale of a land plot at an attractive price and transferred 30 thousand rubles to the specified details as an advance payment. When the seller stopped communicating, the victim realized that he had been deceived and contacted the police.

Police remind:

Bank employees and law enforcement officers never call citizens, including using instant messengers, to report problems with a bank account and never offer to transfer money to supposedly safe accounts. This is done exclusively by scammers! If you received a message in a messenger or on a social network on behalf of your friend or even a relative asking for a loan of money, do not immediately transfer money, with a high degree of probability you may be asked to do so by scammers who have illegally obtained access to an account on a social network or telephone your loved one’s book. You must independently contact your friend or relative by phone and make sure that they are not trying to deceive you.

Another useful tip is that when making online purchases, you should not make an advance payment to the seller without making sure of its reliability and before actually receiving the purchased goods. On trading platforms, purchases must be made using the «Safe Deal» feature.

Be vigilant, do not let scammers take over your money.

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