A new fraud scheme called “erroneous transfer” is gaining ground in Russia. The victim receives a small amount of money on her card, and a few minutes later the “sender” calls or writes to her and politely asks her to return the money, as he has a wrong number and the transfer was intended for another person.
Anton Nemkin, a member of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, IT and Communications and federal coordinator of the Digital Russia party project, said.
"In order not to arouse suspicion, a fraudster can pretend to be a confused teenager, an elderly person or a courier who refers to confusion in the numbers. He may even send a screenshot of the payment to “prove” his innocence. Everything looks like a common household mistake," the deputy said.
The expert said that next comes the main thing - the method of “return”. The fraudster asks to transfer funds back not to where they came from, but to another account, explaining that the former card has already been silenced, the MP added.
"Sometimes they ask to use a specific payment service or terminal. Especially dangerous are cases when the victim is persuaded to install a ‘special application for return’ - in fact, it is a trojan stealing bank data," the expert said.
While the victim is trying to find out, a new text message arrives - ostensibly from the bank - with a refund confirmation code or a request to “confirm the operation,” Nemkin said. He warned that, in fact, with the help of this code, fraudsters get direct access to the bank account and further conduct any financial transactions.
The parliamentarian noted that in the case of receiving such a transfer should not be in a hurry to return the money.
"The first thing to do is to check your transaction history on the bank's official app, rather than trusting notifications that may be fake. Make sure if the money has actually arrived in the account and not just displayed as a notification. You should also contact the bank's official number and clarify how to proceed in such a situation. Never send money to ‘other’ details at someone else's request," he emphasized in a conversation with RT.
Earlier, law enforcers in St. Petersburg uncovered a major phone fraud scheme.