Fraudsters have started convincing Russians to hand over cash to couriers

Fraudsters are increasingly using a variant of the "safe account" deception scheme, Ashot Oganesyan, founder of the DLBI vulnerability and data leakage intelligence service, told Izvestia. At first, the attackers, as before, convince the potential victim that the funds are in danger. However, then, instead of encouraging the person to transfer the money to a secure account, they ask to withdraw it through an ATM and hand it over to a courier.

"Couriers are recruited on Telegram channels or the darknet to participate in the theft, and their commission is 5-10% of the amount stolen. Sometimes they present fake documents of law enforcement officers, but most often they name a certain password, which is justified by the 'secrecy' of the operation," the expert said.

According to him, then the couriers convert the funds into cryptocurrency through special exchangers and transfer them to the organizers of the fraudulent scheme.

The scheme with couriers began to spread actively 1.5-2 months ago and quickly became dominant, he emphasized. According to his data, it already accounts for about 80% of thefts under the model with "the need to secure funds". It allows bypassing almost all the systems of ford control previously created by the Central Bank and banks, he noted.

The last large-scale tightening of such checks was in July 2024: then the new requirements of the Bank of Russia came into force. According to them, credit organizations are obliged to return stolen money if they have not implemented a number of measures to prevent suspicious transactions.

The Bank of Russia confirmed this information to Izvestia: indeed, after the introduction of the new measures, criminals began to steal money from citizens more often with the help of "collectors" - fake couriers.

Read more in an exclusive Izvestia article:

Money transportation: fraudsters have started convincing Russians to hand over cash to couriers