The State Duma has warned of a surge in fraudulent schemes exploiting the topic of capital repairs and housing and communal services debt. As reported by TASS in the lower house of parliament, scammers use a whole range of tools: from fake receipts distributed directly in entrances to calls allegedly from lawyers promising to "remove the capital repair line from the payment slip for a fee." The basic trick is to demand an advance payment of several tens of thousands of rubles and links to non-existent closed programs of the Ministry of Finance.
The technical essence of the deception is based on imitating official procedures. Scammers send SMS with a link to "debt write-off confirmation," demand a code from the message, or offer to conclude a contract with vague wording.
A real lawyer never calls first and does not search for a debtor through databases, and the real procedure for debt annulment is initiated exclusively through an arbitration court or out-of-court bankruptcy at the MFC. Capital repair benefits exist, but are provided only at the initiative of the citizen through social protection authorities.
The authenticity of a creditor can be checked through the Bank of Russia register, which already lists over two thousand illegal companies, and the status of a lawyer through bar associations and the arbitration case file.
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