Fraudulent call centers have abandoned direct demands to transfer money and have moved on to complex multi-stage scenarios with dozens of participants. This was warned by the Department for Combating Illegal Use of Information and Communication Technologies (UBK) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.
The scheme unfolds in five stages. First, the victim is added to a group chat with the name of their organization: real names and photos of colleagues, a business style of communication, discussion of "orders", "registers" and "digitalization". The goal is to create a sense of legitimacy and collective norm.
Then a link to the "official bot" appears in the chat with a name that mimics a government resource. The user is invited to "confirm the data" - click a button, send a contact, pass a check. Other participants demonstratively report successful completion. The Ministry of Internal Affairs emphasizes: the task of this stage is not to gain access to accounts, but to transfer a person to a controlled psychological state.
At the third stage, the tone changes abruptly. The victim begins to receive messages about logins to "Gosuslugi", the execution of powers of attorney and applications for microloans - the phone is filled with SMS from MFIs. The person is convinced that all significant services have already been hacked, the money has almost been stolen.
Against the background of stress, someone appears who will "help": a "treasury employee", a "technical support specialist" or a "law enforcement representative". The key moment of the scheme is that the person calls the proposed number himself, convinced that he is acting correctly. He is promised help, while simultaneously raising the stakes: they report that the funds have allegedly already been transferred to terrorist organizations and he is threatened with a criminal case. The pressure is based on the fear of responsibility and the desire to prove one's innocence.
In the final stage, under the pretext of "blocking operations", "declaring" or "checking the source of origin", the victim is persuaded to transfer money - sometimes in parts, sometimes through "trusted persons".
