Involvement of Russians in unwittingly aiding and abetting fraudsters increased by 20%

In 2024, scammers are 20% more likely to use schemes to involve Russians in their fraudulent schemes. In particular, it concerns the fact that citizens, without realizing it, become dropships - that is, they transfer money stolen by fraudsters from other victims from one account to another. Evgenia Lazareva, the curator of the Moshelovka platform, told Izvestia about this, based on the statistics of citizens' appeals.

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She explained: after the law came into force on July 25, 2024, which obliges banks to suspend suspicious transfers and transfer the data of compromised accounts to the Central Bank's database, credit institutions began to be very attentive to each operation. As a result, the demand for so-called droppers - people whose bank accounts are used to withdraw fraudulently stolen funds - has grown significantly. Lazareva specified that the "life" of cards of willing or unwilling assistants of swindlers has been reduced from a couple of weeks to two days.

"The resonance around the new law was so strong that it became more difficult for attackers to find voluntary drops. Therefore, they had to find new ways to withdraw the funds of deceived citizens into their pockets. First of all, they began to use schemes for blindly involving good citizens more often," the expert said.

The press service of the Central Bank confirmed that in addition to more or less conscious participation in dropship, there are cases when people do not even know that they are involved in illegal activities.

As a result, unwitting accomplices of fraudulent schemes get into the database of suspicious accounts maintained by the Central Bank, and, as a consequence, are deprived of remote banking services.

Read more in the exclusive material of Izvestia:

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