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- You'll show him a copper penny: scammers deceive Russians with promises of easy money
You'll show him a copper penny: scammers deceive Russians with promises of easy money
Fake investments have become one of the most common schemes to defraud people online. A client is offered money to invest in "promising assets", promising high returns. Fraudulent promotion of goods on marketplaces is among the new trends. How to recognize fraudsters - in the material "Izvestia".
Under the guise of employees of recruitment agencies
According to VTB, in January, the number of frauds related to phishing and offers to earn money on the Internet, increased by 50% compared to December. At the same time, the number of scams promising online earnings increased by 50%. One of the most common schemes is fake investments. The client is offered to invest money in "promising assets", promising high income. However, after the funds are transferred, access to the platform is blocked.
- Among the new trends is fraud with the promotion of goods on marketplaces, - told "Izvestia" in the press service of VTB. - The victim is offered paid work on leaving likes, reviews and booking hotels. After several completed tasks require prepayment or purchase of "access to the platform", after which the scammers disappear.
In an employment scam, the client is offered a job vacancy, but is asked to install a special application to get to work. In reality, this is disguised malware that gives attackers full access to the device and banking data.
In addition, in recent months, Sberbank has also recorded a surge in fraudulent activity with promises of easy earnings on marketplaces. Under the guise of employees of recruitment agencies, attackers call and invite you to a supposedly high-paying remote job. To talk in detail about the vacancy, the potential victim will be offered to call on Skype or Zoom, where you can demonstrate a presentation. During a half-hour meeting, the pseudo-recruiter will try to enter into confidence, and then ask to check the bank account, to which allegedly the salary will be transferred.
- To do this, you will have to "live" show the screen of your device with an open banking application and transfer a certain amount of money to the phone number, which will name the interlocutor - told "Izvestia" in the press service of "Sber". - After a successful transfer, the attacker will make you a job offer, and to return the funds from his cell phone to your bank account he will send an SMS.
The message will contain the correct amount of the transfer, but you do not see that there is not a return of funds, but their repeated debiting in favor of fraudsters.
In December 2024, Roskomnadzor restricted access to 5.7 thousand phishing sites. In January 2025, access to another 4.3 thousand such sites was restricted, and in total last year they closed 69.9 thousand, reported "Izvestia" in the press service of the RKN.
The most dangerous
One of the new schemes, which is now successfully used by fraudsters - deception under the guise of employment in the points of delivery of orders of popular marketplaces. Online stores are actively expanding their network of checkout points, and advertisements for employees can be found at every turn - this is what attackers use. Recently, specialists of the IS company F.A.C.C.T. revealed a whole criminal group that specializes in such fraud. In just one month they managed to steal about 5 million rubles from victims, the average amount of debits from users' accounts amounted to 19 thousand rubles.
Fraudsters under the guise of the owners of PVZs place advertisements on popular platforms for the recruitment of employees. Potential candidates are offered an interview in WhatsApp (owned by the corporation Meta, recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation), but they can call in the usual way. Curiously, the main question of such an interview is what operating system is installed on the victim's smartphone. Criminals are only interested in Android users, and only with them the communication continues. The user is told that they need to fill out a questionnaire, and under the pretext of downloading an application necessary for work, they send a link. In reality, the application contains a remote access trojan (RAT) that allows the criminals to debit the victim's accounts.
Mains Lab Technical Director Andrey Provkin categorized the most dangerous traps:
- "Easy Earnings: Promises of quick and easy income without much effort are the first sign of a scam. Remember that real earnings require time, knowledge and labor.
- Financial pyramids: Scammers offer to invest money in "high-yield assets" promising quick profits. However, such projects, as a rule, have no real basis and sooner or later collapse.
- Phishing sites: Scammers create websites that mimic well-known resources and trick users into giving them login credentials and passwords for bank cards and other personal accounts.
Unregulated problems
Various "gaming" scams are also in vogue, requiring users to perform tasks such as "liking" videos on social media, leaving consumer reviews of products on marketplaces, or commenting in exchange for the promise of payment for each click or review.
- This problem is due to the fact that Russia has not regulated the schemes for leaving consumer reviews and forming ratings of goods and services on marketplaces," explains Maria Girich, a researcher at the laboratory for analyzing the best international practices of the Gaidar Institute. - This leads to mass purchases of reviews, as well as deception of consumers on marketplaces who read these reviews.
The fact is that in the EU and the US, such practices are prohibited by law, the expert explains. For example, sellers are forbidden to post consumer reviews of products if the seller is not sure that the review is really a person who bought the product. Job offers related to transferring money, making purchases or receiving parcels on behalf of another person are also very common. The greatest danger is the disclosure of personal or financial information - on average, a person loses about $2,000 dollars on such a scam. According to CNBC, fraud related to online jobs and employment in general accounts for about 9% of all online fraud.
- It should be remembered that free cheese, it is in a mousetrap, - reminds the co-chairman of "Business Russia" in the Moscow region Oleg Chernov. - It is simply impossible to earn serious money without counseling knowledge and experience in any country in the world.
How to protect yourself from dangerous temptations
Experts urge to look at the content of messages with the offer of earnings. Usually scammers try to interest a person and promise him an easy start to his own business or a free work schedule. Also important is the way in which the offer of earnings is made. Often fraudulent messages come to messengers from strangers and do not contain details. Contacting this stranger is often required to receive them. The hiring process is usually quick - with no interview, qualifications or experience verification.
- "A red flag is also the requirement to deposit money - to invest your money to be able to withdraw all your earnings in the future," notes Maria Girich. - Or, for example, to pay for training, buy a subscription to an app or purchase goods.
The lack of full contact information, lack of or poorly designed website (e.g., links on the page not working), use of unsafe payment methods (e.g., offering to withdraw funds in cryptocurrency rather than in the form of a bank payment, etc.), offer to follow a link or install an application (this can create risks of fraud, as well as theft of personal or financial data) should definitely alert you.
- What should be of concern? Unnaturally high salaries or too easy working conditions," says Alexander Zaitsev, head of ANCOR's Personal Data Protection and Information Security Project Implementation Group. - Other red flags: mandatory prepayment for any services, requests for personal data. Trying to get you to turn on screen sharing under any pretext is a scam.
Do not install applications from links that come from people you don't know at the time of employment - legitimate applications and access will be provided to you at your workplace, F.A.C.C.T. advises. Before you go to any site using a link, carefully check their spelling: even if visually they are similar to the official ones - there are always mistakes in the domains of fraudsters (substitution of letters with numbers, extra characters, as well as letter combinations similar to the original ones, for example, instead of "ai" may be indicated "al", etc.).
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