Russians have become twice as likely to transfer cash to fraudsters in 2025.

This year, the popularity of fraudulent schemes has increased significantly, in which attackers using social engineering force Russians to transfer cash to couriers. The number of such cases in 2025 has doubled compared to the beginning of last year, Sergey Golovanov, chief expert at Kaspersky Lab, told Izvestia on March 5.

"It is extremely difficult to track cash. Moreover, banks' assistance in returning funds to customers for transactions made without their consent makes deception with transfers less effective," he said.According to him, the fight against droppers has become more effective: now, if a person is recognized as a drop, all accounts are blocked and he cannot withdraw money.

In addition, to combat the fraud scheme using cash and couriers, it is necessary to introduce a cooling-off period for cash withdrawals.

"Indeed, fraudsters are increasingly trying to force deceived citizens to transfer cash to them. With the help of their "couriers", the attackers are trying to bypass the blockages and withdraw the stolen money from the perimeter of the payment infrastructure, where a suspicious transfer can be suspended," the press service of the Central Bank of Russia told Izvestia.

Last year, in December, the Central Bank said that banks in the third quarter of 2024 href="https://iz.ru/1804383/2024-12-09/banki-v-rossii-otrazili-161-mln-atak-moshennikov-v-iii-kvartale-2024-goda"> We protected our clients from 16.1 million attacks by online scammers, preventing them from stealing 4.9 trillion rubles. At the same time, they reported that the fraudsters still managed to steal 9.3 billion rubles in July – September.