In Russia, they discovered a “restaurant scheme” for cashing out money

At its peak, up to 100 billion rubles were withdrawn through it annually

The Central Bank, Rosfinmonitoring and the Federal Tax Service of Russia exposed the scheme of cashing money through restaurants. At its peak, it allowed withdrawing 100 billion rubles from the system annually, reports RBC.

The scammers worked through the non-banking credit organization Russian Investment Bank (RNKO RIB). On its basis, its own processing and data processing centers were launched, which made it possible to confuse payments.

For the operation of the scheme, five thousand cash-in terminals were purchased, and loyal banks were also connected. At the same time, RIB did not have the right to own acquiring, it acted as an agent of a large acquirer to attract new customers.

In addition, the organization performed a settlement function – a key one for the entire scheme. At this stage, payments that were accepted by restaurants went to numerous cash providers – pharmacies, car dealerships and tour operators.

At the same time, the client received a normal-looking check, cashback, and could order a payment statement. However, the restaurants did not receive money to the account, but were withdrawn from the terminal of another organization before the collection. Thus, non-cash payment was replaced by cash.

The head of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers, Igor Bukharov, suggested that the participants in the scheme were ruined by their own greed, since the volume of such payments exceeded the limit, after which the competent authorities could not but pay attention to it.