Scammers began to use the names of Russian stars to deceive Russians

The scammers started using fake pranks from Russian movie stars. Maria Sinitsyna, senior analyst at the Digital Risk Protection department at F6, told Izvestia about this on March 21.

According to her, F6 has studied one of the partner programs actively used in 2023-2024. It was an offer from a fraudulent lottery, where you need to choose a prize box. According to the company's calculations, they managed to earn more than 81 billion rubles from this.

When using this scheme, the attackers use images of media persons who allegedly recommend such a lottery. They also conduct similar "sweepstakes" on behalf of major brands — marketplaces, social networks and messengers.

If the victim follows the link from the ad, they get to a resource where they are offered to open boxes with prizes. Usually the first two attempts are unsuccessful, and the third time you get a cash prize — often in foreign currency. To receive the money, the victim clicks on a pop-up button. Then she is asked to enter the details of the card to which the winnings will allegedly be credited.

The site will issue a sending error, explaining this by the need to convert the currency into rubles, which will cost a certain amount. Each time, new payments will be requested from the victim to complete transactions, and the payment amount will also grow. As a result, the victim will receive nothing and will lose all the transferred money, and the bank card data will be compromised.

Connection check: Fraud victims will not be able to quickly take out loans and transfer money

They want to add them to a special database of "trusting people"

Last year, the attackers used images of bloggers, artists popular among young people, as well as trash streamers for such advertising, Sinitsyna said. In 2025, the millionaire blogger became the most popular image that scammers use to advertise the "boxed" scheme: he accounts for every second ad from scammers.

According to analysts at F6, two fraudulent affiliate programs that illegally use images of Russian artists and bloggers have managed to steal just over 1 million rubles from Russian users over the past week.

The popularity of a fraudulent scheme involving practical jokes on behalf of famous people is falling. The number of partner programs is decreasing, but the amount of average damage that scammers cause to victims is growing, the expert added.

"According to our observations, the scammers' bet on using images of popular theater and film actors has not yet worked. One possible reason is that viewers of films and TV series featuring popular actors are more likely to hear warnings about fraud and are more critical of the proposed "practical jokes," she concluded.

On March 20, Deputy General Director of the Rabota service.Alexander Veterkov, Chief operating officer of the SberPodbor service, told Izvestia about ways to identify fraudsters when looking for a job. According to him, fake employers often rush applicants, may require some kind of prepayment for tuition, paperwork, etc. In addition, hackers can steal data from questionnaires, so the expert recommended not to add confidential information to them (SNILS, bank card data, etc.).