Scammers tricked a Russian woman out of about 4 million rubles by posing as a crypto swap income scheme. She took most of the money on credit, including a loan secured against her home.
It started with a channel about saving money on a messaging app. The police haven’t said which one. A stranger messaged the woman and offered her “steady income” from converting one cryptocurrency into another. A team of “curators” would supposedly guide every trade in exchange for 30% of the profits each month.
The first test trade went well, and after a few more, her account dashboard showed a profit of about 100,000 rubles. Trusting the numbers on the screen, she decided to invest more. She took out a 1 million ruble loan secured against her home and transferred the money to the platform. Later, on the curators’ advice, she borrowed another 1 million from other banks.
During one of the transfers, her account was “locked”, and she was told to pay 300,000 rubles to unlock it. To cover this, she took out new loans and borrowed from friends. In total, she spent about 1.7 million rubles more on the fake “unlock”.
When she tried to withdraw her funds, the scammers simply asked for more transfers. After several transactions, her own bank accounts were frozen, and the “crypto exchange specialists” stopped responding.
The woman went to the police. A criminal case has been opened for large-scale fraud (Part 4, Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code).
The scheme isn’t new. Earlier, two teachers from Ussuriysk lost more than 2 million rubles after believing strangers who promised them crypto investment profits.
