Telephone scammers forced a pensioner from Minsk to sell her apartment and transfer them more than 100,000 rubles.
The press service of the Main Department of Internal Affairs of the Minsk City Executive Committee reported this on Telegram.
How the scammers operated
The capital's police received a call from a bank where an elderly client was making suspicious transactions with large sums of money.
The bank employee asked the client if she had become a victim of fraud. The pensioner did not answer and ran away, leaving her card in the bank.
The police identified the owner of the card. She turned out to be a 69-year-old woman from Minsk. It turned out that the woman really became a victim of fraud.
However, she was so scared that she denied it for several hours and did not believe that she had been deceived, the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs said.
The pensioner later said that she had been in contact with the scammers since November and had managed to transfer her savings of 3,000 rubles and more than 4,000 rubles taken out on credit to them.
After that, the woman sold the apartment for 170,000 rubles. Part of this money also migrated to the scammers' account.
The pensioner was convinced that she was “declaring” her money and saving her apartment from fraudsters.
To be more convincing, the scammers used official symbols of Belarusian agencies and made video calls.
Thanks to a vigilant bank employee, it was possible to block several last transactions and save about 80,000 rubles.
However, before this, the Minsk resident managed to transfer about 100,000 rubles to the scammers. A criminal case has been opened.
