«Your relative got into an accident»: «couriers» who worked for scammers were detained in Crimea

CrimeaPRESS reports:

Officers of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Republic of Crimea, together with colleagues from territorial internal affairs bodies, detained five participants in the remote fraud scheme «Your relative got into an accident». Earlier, six people aged 78 to 86 years old, who became victims of scammers, contacted the duty units of the police departments of Yalta, Simferopol, Yevpatoria and Kerch.

According to the victims, at the beginning of August, unknown people called them on their phones and introduced themselves as police officers. They all acted according to the same scheme: they told the pensioners that an accident had occurred because of their relative and they needed money to avoid bringing the case to court.

‍The misled elderly residents of the peninsula cashed their savings and, following the instructions of strangers, handed them over to couriers. The total amount of damage was more than 3 million rubles.

All the detained assistants of the swindlers are local residents. Thus, a 36-year-old woman, together with her 31-year-old cohabitant and a 37-year-old friend, took 1 million rubles from a 79-year-old grandmother from Simferopol. At the same time, the accomplices decided not to give the profit to the curator, but to divide it among themselves. During the search, police officers found some of the stolen money in their possession.

Another courier is a 20-year-old resident of Sevastopol. Following the instructions of his «employers», he took more than 800 thousand rubles from elderly citizens from Yevpatoriya and Kerch, which he transferred to his curator, keeping for himself about 10% of the amount for the work, which he spent on personal needs. This person involved in four episodes on the territory of the Republic of Crimea.

The youngest courier for the fraudsters was a 14-year-old local schoolgirl who fraudulently took money totaling 1 million rubles from two pensioners from Yalta. The teenage courier transferred the cash to her employers via an ATM, also keeping some of the fee for herself.— the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Crimea told about the “couriers”.

Based on these facts, criminal cases have been initiated under Part 2 and Part 3 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. All defendants have confessed to the crime. Currently, three offenders have been remanded in custody, and one has been given a preventive measure in the form of a ban on certain actions. The minor has been placed on preventive record at the police department, and the teenager’s legal representatives have been brought to administrative responsibility.

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