Telephone scammers posing as representatives of a mobile operator, a bank and the financial police swindled 18,000 rubles from a resident of Vitebsk.
This was reported by the press service of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee.
How the scammers operated
A 70-year-old resident of Vitebsk received a call from a number with the name of a mobile operator in the WhatsApp messenger (banned in Russia, owned by Meta, a company recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation).
The caller told the Vitebsk resident that her tariff plan was out of date and that she needed to renew the contract, and then sent her a link to the company's supposedly official app via the Viber messenger. The pensioner entered her passport details.
After that, a call allegedly came from the bank. The interlocutor told the Vitebsk resident that she was being attacked by scammers and that she needed to do a number of manipulations.
Then a "financial police officer" picked up the phone. He told the pensioner that the scammers had hacked the bank databases and opened a transit account in her name, through which money was withdrawn to finance the SVO.
Following the instructions of the scammers, the woman took out loans and transferred about 18,000 rubles to the scammers, the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee Department of Internal Affairs reported .
The Internal Affairs Directorate reminded that employees of mobile operators, banks and law enforcement agencies do not make calls via messengers, and the police do not involve civilians in special operations to catch criminals.
