Cyber ​​scammers stole 2.8 billion rubles

The Bank of Russia summed up the results for the second quarter of 2022 on a rather sad topic – cases of theft of funds from citizens. Their number decreased by 10 percent compared to the same period last year. But the overall scale is impressive: since the beginning of the year, the attackers have stolen more than 6 billion rubles from the accounts of citizens! 3.3 billion for the first quarter and 2.8 for the second.

Last year, however, the scale of the disaster was even greater – fraudsters stole more than 13.5 billion rubles, an amount comparable to the budget of a small city or a large factory. But this money was stolen not from the city and not from the factory – from ordinary people, often the elderly.

Interestingly, the activity of cyber scammers decreased from the end of February to April. Apparently, they were looking for other ways to withdraw money received fraudulently: after all, an important stage of the crime for fraudsters is the withdrawal of money from the jurisdiction of Russian law enforcement agencies, and for this, many of them use foreign accounts. For a while, cyber fraud froze. But since May, an increase in the number of calls and mailings from intruders has been recorded again – apparently, they have found new channels.

And, unfortunately, the number of cyber scammers is only growing. In April-June of this year, the Bank of Russia initiated the blocking of 117.6 thousand telephone numbers. This is almost 10 times more than last year. The number of fraudulent Internet resources for which the regulator initiated blocking has increased by more than one and a half times.

Yana MAYEVSKAYA.