Cyber police eliminated a fraudulent call center: its employees stole money from citizens' bank cards
Attackers, using social engineering methods, first asked people for information about bank cards, and after gaining access to accounts, withdrew money. To prevent people from becoming suspicious, they developed a whole scheme: they posed as employees of banking institutions, reported suspicious transactions and even involved so-called “police officers” in solving the problem.
The fraudulent scheme was exposed by employees of the Cyber Crime Control Department in the Kharkiv region together with the investigative department of the Kharkiv district police department.
The activities of the call center were organized by a 25-year-old local resident together with two administrators. The defendants attracted operators to the work, for which they developed detailed instructions for fraudulent actions. Also, the organizer at hacker forums bought databases of bank customers, who were called by employees of the call center under the guise of employees of financial institutions.
Citizens were informed that suspicious transactions were allegedly made from their bank card or that an application had been received to change the financial number. Then citizens were switched to other call-center employees, who reported “details” about the “situation with the bank account”. The operators also assured the victims that information about the alleged fraudulent activities would be passed on to the local police.
After that, another employee of the call center called already under the guise of a police officer. To convince the victims, the attackers used “sip-telephony” and replaced the numbers with those indicated on official police websites. Pseudopolitesky reported that in order to block fraudulent actions, it is necessary to name him a code from an SMS message. As soon as citizens called the code — the attackers stole money from the victim's bank card. Among the deceived are citizens of Ukraine and CIS countries.
Police officers searched the places of residence of the defendants and in the office space where the hall center was located. More than 70 computers and the same number of phones have been removed. Searches were carried out with the involvement of employees of the special purpose police regiment of the Kharkiv region police. Currently, law enforcement officers determine the victims and the final amount of damages. Criminal proceedings have been opened under Part 3 of Art.
190 (Fraud) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The sanction of the article provides for up to eight years in prison. The issue of declaring suspicion to the defendants is being resolved. Investigative actions continue. Procedural management is carried out by the Kharkiv District Prosecutor's Office.
Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine
