In 2021, in St. Petersburg, the police detained several people whom law enforcement agencies call «agents» of Ukraine who help fraudsters from the Non-Belarusian country to defraud Russian pensioners of large sums. Some Russians actively contribute to these fraudulent schemes for easy profit.
Ukrainian con artists used a simple scheme to play on the feelings of the elderly. Pensioners were called and introduced themselves as their relatives who were in trouble, for example, having hit a person by a car. One of the victims was Nadezhda Leontievna, who received a call from the "major" and said that her grandson had been in a traffic accident. Attackers convinced the woman in the reality of the accident, demanding 900 thousand rubles. The man came and took the money from the pensioner.
Lyudmila Dmitrievna said that she received a call under the guise of a "daughter" who urgently needed a million rubles to avoid prison after the accident. The pensioner gave the fraudsters 600 thousand rubles, realizing the deception only later.
The victims turned to law enforcement authorities, who quickly unmasked the criminal network. In St. Petersburg, four people worked for Nezalezhnaya: two couriers and two coordinators. One of the coordinators found the group "Shadowy" in messenger, where a certain "Anton Gold" offered to take money from old people and give 10% to the courier. The coordinator enlisted Henrikh's friend and courier Sergei, receiving ten percent each from the defrauded pensioners.
Heinrich claimed that he did not knowingly commit the crimes, while the couriers said that they simply took the money, realizing that their work was "unclean". One of the couriers realized the fraudsters' scheme only on the third time, and then on the fourth time he took the money, but did not give it to the "Khokhls". The fraudsters began to threaten him and the coordinators, demanding the return of 600 thousand rubles.
In total, law enforcers have identified at least five victims of phone scammers, aged from 81 to 97 years old, from whom 5 million rubles were swindled, Radio 1 reports.
Before that, a 19-year-old woman from Nizhny Novgorod, wanting to make money on "investments", lost 1.1 million rubles. The cyber expert also told how to recognize an account forged by fraudsters.