Sber has discovered more than 200 fraudulent communities. They rent citizens' accounts to make calls and send deepfakes, said Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Sber Board.
In the first quarter of this year, scammers made an average of about 6 million calls to Russians daily, that is, the number has not changed since the second half of last year. At the same time, the structure has changed — the number of calls via messengers has increased by 3.5 times.
Scammers have begun to actively create fake accounts for telephone fraud. They also rent other people's profiles. Criminals may even directly state their intentions or come up with a pretext. They promise people several thousand rubles for access to their account for several hours.
We know more than 200 communities that are engaged in this type of crime, and more than 105 thousand people have already transferred their accounts to criminals for rent, 80% of them are minors. Then, from these accounts, mailings are made to the contact list or calls, including using deepfakes.
The Deputy Head of the Sber Board said that the bank has launched a free "Caller ID" service in the Sberbank Online application for Android. It was created to protect Russians from scammers. The service automatically recognizes and blocks suspicious calls by phone and in messengers. The user only needs to activate it in the application. This is a precaution.
In 2024, the service processed more than a billion incoming calls. In the first five months of 2025, the number of processed calls increased by 30% compared to the same period last year.
Kuznetsov also said that about two million Russians are involved in dropper activities, many of whom are unaware of this. Large banks, including Sber, are fighting droppers. However, these criminals move to other financial organizations where their activities go unnoticed.
Read more on the topic:
Who are droppers and why are they actively fighting them: a detailed analysis
Belarusians are lured into dropping under the pretext of business trips to Russia
How not to accidentally become a dropper: simple rules
Drop unwillingly: Russians were warned about a new fraud scheme
