In Zelenogorsk, scammers involved an 11-year-old child in a criminal scheme

In Zelenogorsk, police are investigating the circumstances of an Internet fraud in which an 11-year-old schoolgirl was dragged into.

According to law enforcement agencies, at night a notification about blocking the account due to a “suspicious transfer” was received on the phone of a 64-year-old Zelenogorsk woman. In the banking application, she discovered a write-off of 88 thousand rubles. It later turned out that the money was transferred due to the fault of her granddaughter.

According to the schoolgirl, a “friend” wrote to her in one of the messengers asking for help – “to look at something from her sister.” The girl received a code, which she passed on to her interlocutor. Then new instructions followed: “unlink” a certain account and use the adult’s phone. When the girl refused, the scammers scared the child that otherwise they would write off 5 thousand rubles from her father’s card.

“Following the instructions she received, the schoolgirl transferred 120 thousand rubles from one grandmother’s account to another, and then 88 thousand to someone else’s account. Only in the morning, after calling her real friend, the girl found out that she had not sent any messages, and her account had been hacked,” the police said.

Based on this fact, a criminal case was opened under Part 2 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Fraud”. The perpetrators face up to 5 years in prison.

Law enforcement officers found out that the girl had previously been repeatedly told about methods of Internet fraud, both at home and at school. However, she did not suspect deception, because she was sure that she was communicating in correspondence with her friend

Police officers strongly recommend that parents conduct preventive conversations with their children.