The police of the city of Kamyshin in the Volgograd region detained telephone scammers who deceived people in the amount of over 4 million rubles. This was announced on Monday, November 23, by the official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Irina Volk.
“The suspects in the commission of the crimes were detained in one of the hotels in the city of Kamyshin, Volgograd Region, with the forceful support of Rosgvardia officers,” Volk quoted TASS as saying.
She noted that the members of the criminal group introduced themselves to their potential victims as bank security officers. The attackers informed the interlocutors that money was debited from their accounts by unknown persons, or that the bank card was blocked. Then the scammers asked to transfer money to a secure reserve account or asked for the card details and passwords from SMS messages.
“The investigation preliminarily established that the so-called cashiers from among the members of the group removed the stolen money in Barnaul and Novosibirsk and transferred it to the organizer, who later distributed it among the accomplices,” the Interior Ministry official explained.
She added that the detainees were involved in five facts of embezzlement, according to preliminary data. The damage from their activities amounted to over 4 million rubles.
The investigation initiated criminal cases of theft (Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and fraud (Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
“Ten members of the group have been taken into custody, one is under house arrest,” Volk said.
In August, Anton Kukanov, the head of the Roskachestvo Center for Digital Expertise, named ways of identifying scammers by phone number. According to him, the most effective way to avoid talking to scammers is not to answer calls from unknown numbers.