A couple living in a rural area of the North Kazakhstan region fell victim to online scammers and lost 10 million tenge. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Sputnik Kazakhstan.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it all started when a 60-year-old rural resident saw an Instagram ad claiming that a certain bank makes payments to all citizens born before 1991. The woman submitted an application, providing her name and phone number.
Soon she was called by a person who introduced himself as a specialist from the brokerage company "Goldmans Group". It is worth noting that a real bakery enterprise also uses the same name. The scammer offered the woman income through investments.
Following his instructions, the rural resident opened a "trading account" and transferred 100 dollars, which she had received in installments through a banking service, to that account. Then, for about a month, a woman who introduced herself as an "analyst" kept in touch with her, advising on "investments".
The rural resident persuaded her husband to participate in the scheme as well. They spent all their savings and took out loans from various banks. Only later did they realize they had become victims of cyber scammers. The amount of damage was 10 million tenge.
Based on this fact, police identified a number of people who participated in the fraudulent scheme as droppers. After explanatory work, the victims filed a civil lawsuit to recover the damage from the droppers.
According to police, the "investment" scam is not one of the most common methods. Since the beginning of the year, 16 cases of such fraud have been registered in the North Kazakhstan region. However, such crimes in most cases lead to especially large-scale damage.