The fraud scheme is simple – on the Internet, the victim saw an advertisement where unknown persons promised a monthly income of 90,000 rubles. Considering that the pension of a Nizhnekamsk citizen is 15,000 rubles, the temptation was too great, and the pensioner left his phone number on the website. Then he was contacted by a “cryptocurrency analyst” who introduced himself as Nikolai Kipyatkov.
First, the caller offered to “start trading” for 30,000 rubles. After replenishing the account and “converting into cryptocurrency”, the pensioner began to make transactions. Seeing how quickly the chart with the size of the profit grows on the page of his personal account, the man made a few more deposits. For one of them, the victim even issued a loan secured by an apartment in the amount of about 3 million rubles.
When the victim wanted to withdraw part of the profit, the scammers began to play for time and demand additional funds:
“Nikolai told me: in order to withdraw all the funds from my brokerage account in the amount of about 43,000 US dollars, it is necessary to transfer 261,000 rubles for collection. The money was supposed to be delivered to me on the same day.. But I never saw the dollars.”
The Nizhnekamsk citizen made his first deposit in September 2022, and went to the police only in December. In total, the pensioner lost 3.56 million rubles and was left with a loan that now has to be repaid. Law enforcement agencies opened a criminal case under the article “Fraud”.
At the end of October, a resident of Kogalym similarly lost 2 million rubles.