Police colonel gave a recipe for fighting telephone scammers – “doctors”

Fraudsters nowadays use a hundred million tricks to take possession of the savings or even real estate of overly gullible citizens, and since the public’s awareness is still increasing, they are becoming more and more inventive and, alas, are already using AI. But some criminals do not disdain quite old tricks: for example, they can still call a person on behalf of a supposed doctor and report disappointing test results (diagnosis). A “medical luminary” can “save” a patient, but the treatment (consultation) must, of course, be paid for in advance. “MK” talked to those who have encountered this type of fraud and found out from lawyers how not to fall victim to the lawlessness.

Deceiving people, especially the elderly, exploiting their concerns for their health and life for profit – there is nowhere to go lower. To scare an elderly person with an oncological diagnosis that does not exist, to almost give him a heart attack with this “news”, and then to rip off the last of his money for the upcoming supposed “treatment” is beyond human understanding. But older people often perceive doctors as guardian angels; they hold on to them as the last straw in the hope that they will prolong their lives. Attackers without a soul, without heart and conscience know this very well and take advantage of it.

“MK” listened to the stories of those who encountered such outrageously cynical methods of fraudsters. Some of the pensioners were luckier – their children or grandchildren stopped them in time, while others trusted the scoundrels in white coats and lost their last penny.

“A year ago, these scammers called me after a fluorography, like, I have spots on the picture,” says Muscovite Anna. “But don’t worry,” the caller told me, “we will cure you, just take the money there.” And even earlier they called my mother and almost gave her a heart attack. Fortunately, she is of sound mind and eventually saw through their plan. But announcing to an elderly person that he has cancer is just the height of disgust!

“Three years ago this is exactly what happened to me – they scared me over the phone with a diagnosis, so much so that my blood pressure rose, and thanks to the fact that my daughter was nearby, she exposed me,” pensioner Galina Alekseevna shared with us. “I didn’t immediately believe that this was possible.” You need to immediately call the clinic and find out if the call came from there.

“When my grandparents were alive, scammers constantly called them on their home phone,” Muscovite Olesya told MK. “I understand that these scoundrels somehow figure out that elderly people live in the apartments.” The last time they called was in front of me – my grandfather was already quite old, I was at his house, helping with the housework. An alleged “cardiologist” called, called grandfather by his first name and patronymic and said: “Wait, I’ll come to you now.” The grandfather said: “I’m passing the phone to my granddaughter!” – and he immediately disappeared. Grandfather ran around the apartment – well, the doctor will come! And I tell him: grandfather, these are scammers! They immediately hung up, as you said about me. After this incident, I simply removed my home phone number. And in the case of my grandmother, I was generally terribly indignant, because they called her on her home phone, supposedly from the Kremlin hospital and said that her tests were bad. And she actually handed them over recently! Maybe it was a coincidence… And they offered her treatment in the Kremlin hospital! And she believed. Then the doctor supposedly arrived, took money from the grandmother and told her to get ready and wait for the car to come for her to take her to the hospital. Grandmother packed her bag, waited and waited, but no one came. She did not tell us how much money she gave. She cried later when she talked about it. I told her to call me immediately in such cases, and I will tell her what to do. It is very painful and insulting for older people that there are such non-humans who offend them!

– Have you contacted somewhere, maybe to law enforcement agencies?

– I did not have the opportunity to spin this story, because I am a single mother, I had a small child at that time… I just wrote, I remember, a complaint to Roszdravnadzor, but there was no answer.

“Unfortunately, most often the older generation becomes victims of fraudulent “doctors,” especially since they are more worried about their health and often have some kind of chronic disease,” says lawyer Alexander Grashchenkov. – The most effective way to combat them is to inform your loved ones and acquaintances about such schemes as much as possible. But the fact that scammers often address their victims by name and patronymic is a real issue of information and personal data leakage. It is this confident approach that often forms the initial trust of a potential victim. Here it is necessary to fight, first of all, with the actual protection of citizens’ personal data. If fraudsters begin to use your full name and even in some cases know your medical history, then we may be talking about a violation of medical confidentiality.

“If those who were called by scammers with such information actually underwent a medical examination or took tests, then we can talk about the disclosure of medical confidentiality, and law enforcement agencies need to deal with this,” says Honored Lawyer of Russia, retired police colonel Ivan Solovyov. – Or criminals act by “luck” – they suddenly fall on a person who has recently passed tests, this can also happen, but this is an unlikely situation.

In my opinion, this method – “a call from the head physician” – is already somewhat outdated. Fraudsters now, even more than money, are interested in an apartment, a person’s real estate, which they use various cunning schemes to force to be transferred to them. Or the second, most common type is open inclination towards terrorism, sabotage and self-harm (they call children and convince them to turn on the oven, put something in the microwave so that there will be an explosion, a fire). And those scammers who work in Russia “specialize” in grandparents, allegedly sending taxi drivers to them, saying that their grandson had an accident and give them money…

I am convinced that here we need to address information security, information sovereignty, so that the resource where we store information about our people is located on Russian territory, administered from Russian territory, and so on, because databases are leaking. And I fully admit that data leaks also occur in some medical institutions. Or they may also leak from private laboratories, which are now visible and invisible. It won’t be difficult to hack a database there.

Well, in order to protect themselves, people need to “use their heads.” After such a call, firstly, call the clinic back. Go to the clinic and get your tests in hand with a doctor’s report before paying to someone unknown and for what. You can look at your own values ​​in the analyzes to see which of them are outside the norm. If they don’t come out, it means you can’t trust various suspicious calls.

Today we understand that scammers can come to us with anything. Along with wishes of peace, goodness, and congratulations on the holiday. Along with information about social benefits. Along with an offer to participate in some fundraising to help the fighters. Artificial intelligence can generate any voice, which means that hacking an account is quite simple. On WhatsApp, voice messages are easily hacked and the voice of its owner is faked; Based on two or three phrases, a message is generated on behalf of a person you know well, and even more so, on whom you depend – for example, your boss.

The only recipe is that nowadays everything needs to be checked personally, preferably not in instant messengers, but by calling the person back. Call back and double check. Survival is in our hands.”