The most common schemes used by cybercriminals

In July of this year, fraudsters deceived 89 citizens of the Vitebsk region, and over 850 throughout the year. In the first half of the year, fraudsters stole over 1 million 260 thousand rubles from residents of the region.

Here are the most common schemes used by cybercriminals.

1. Using Viber or WhatsApp messengers, they call citizens and introduce themselves as law enforcement officers or banking organizations. To be more convincing and gain trust, they send images of fake service IDs. 

   They often work in pairs, playing roles, switching the conversation from one fraudster to another. They always use psychological tricks – they instill fear in the victim of losing money, rush them into making decisions or taking actions, act as helpers in saving money, and can threaten with criminal liability for disclosing information!

   They report that an unscrupulous bank employee or someone else is taking out a loan in your name (sometimes by proxy) and you need to save the money as quickly as possible! After shocking their victim with such news, they offer to help solve the problem: they encourage them to take out a new loan themselves (or several) and install a mobile application that will allow fraudsters to take out an online loan themselves. Then the victim is offered to "temporarily transfer money to a protected account."

   After transferring the funds, the victim is left only to pay off the loans taken out.

2. They post links on the Internet to fake websites of banks, theaters, stores, payment services, and the like. Under various pretexts, they force users to go to these pages and enter their personal data: card number and CVV, SMS codes from the bank, personal passport number.