A businesswoman from the Krasnoyarsk Territory gave more than 21 million rubles to scammers

A 58-year-old resident of the Krasnoturansky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory became a victim of mobile fraud on an especially large scale – the scammers created a whole legend to defraud her of 21.1 million rubles.

It all started when in February of this year the entrepreneur received a call via messenger from an alleged employee of a processing company and stated that a brokerage account had been opened in her name. Under the pretext of closing it and returning previously stolen funds, the attackers began a multi-pronged scam that lasted more than six months. The victim made the first transfers – 30 and 40 thousand rubles, believing that she would activate the “return” of 17 million rubles, allegedly stolen from her by other scammers earlier.

“To give credibility to the legend, the swindlers created a whole group of “specialists,” say the prosecutor’s office. — The culmination was the appearance of the “head of the financial department,” who convinced the woman to install the Trust Wallet and BYBIT applications, where she saw 17.3 million rubles returned. However, to withdraw them, the services of a “currency exchanger” were required. In April, under the control of the new defendant, all virtual funds were transferred to the crypto wallet specified by her. From that moment on, a new round of fraud began. Under the pretext of legalizing funds, insurance, paying for couriers and other problems, the woman was convinced to transfer cash to intermediaries in Krasnoyarsk and Abakan. Even a trip to Moscow to call swindlers to receive money in an office resulted in the transfer of 840 thousand rubles to a courier in a car. Despite repeated requests, meetings with “cash couriers” and promises, the victim did not receive a single ruble. The amount of damage amounted to 21.1 million rubles. Realizing that she had become a victim of deception, she turned to law enforcement officers, who opened a criminal case for fraud (Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation)“

Let us add that over the past week alone in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, more than 78 million rubles were stolen remotely from 197 residents: 17 became victims of fake crypto exchanges; 59 — phishing links to online stores; 65 people were under the influence of false employees of special services and organizations that saved “well-being”; 8 social network users trusted messages from the accounts of friends and acquaintances who asked to borrow money; 48 citizens on the Internet fell for the tricks of unidentified persons through deception. In each case, criminal cases have been initiated and investigated.

In total, since the beginning of 2025, 8,479 residents of the region have become victims of Internet scammers, the total damage caused amounted to 2,455,740,076 rubles. The percentage of detection of these crimes is 26.6% (1,542 crimes were solved); 475 criminal cases of ITT theft were sent to the regional courts.

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