The record amount stolen by telephone scammers from a Russian was 500 million rubles. This was stated by the head of the department for organizing the fight against the illegal use of information and communication technologies, police colonel Philip Nemov, at the Ural Forum “Cybersecurity in Finance”, Izvestia correspondent reports on February 17.
According to him, scammers can keep people “on the wire” for one to two weeks. Moreover, it happens that attackers mock the interlocutor. For example, a person transferred money to them for two weeks, then waited for a “result” for two weeks. And when the victim calls the scammer back and asks about the result, he is told that he can already go and contact the police.
“There are terrible human tragedies when, under the influence of social engineers, people sell housing and send this money to Ukraine. People find themselves in the most difficult situations, ”Nemov said.
He clarified that in 2022, more than 522 thousand cases in the field of IT crimes were initiated.
As reported the day before, according to the Bank of Russia, in 2022, 13.4 billion rubles were stolen from Russians using fraudulent schemes. The average amount of one such transaction increased by almost a third. Among the frequent schemes: calls from “banks”, “law enforcement agencies”, “help with obtaining benefits”, requests for help from “relatives in trouble”. Also, one of the trends analysts call deception in instant messengers. According to VTB estimates, the share of fraudulent calls in messengers has increased fivefold over the past year. Credit organization experts believe that in 2023 instant messengers will become the main channel through which attackers will act.
