In Pavlodar, a taxi driver and police helped a pensioner recover nearly 6 million tenge she had sent to scammers. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Sputnik Kazakhstan.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the incident began at one of the city's car washes. The taxi driver was supposed to deliver a bag to Almaty.
At some point, he noticed cereal spilling from the bag and decided to check its contents. Inside, he found a large sum of money. Suspicious, he turned to the police.
Police officers immediately began clarifying the circumstances, and soon established who the money belonged to and contacted its owner. It turned out that a resident of Pavlodar had become a victim of phone scammers.
First, unknown individuals called her, introducing themselves as employees of an energy supply company. Under the pretext of replacing an electricity meter, they convinced the woman to tell them a code received via SMS.
Later, scammers posing as "e-government" employees contacted her and informed her that a loan had been issued in her name. Under the pretext of "closing" this loan, the fraudsters convinced the woman to hand over 5 million 970 thousand tenge in cash.
To collect the money, the criminals used a courier, who handed the package with the money to the taxi driver. Thanks to the taxi driver's vigilance and operational measures carried out by officers of the Northern Police Department, the money was returned in full to its rightful owner.