Bitcoin Forum

The St. Petersburg police closed a cryptocurrency exchanger belonging to an organized group of scammers. They stole money from bank cards and transferred it into bitcoins.

Fraudsters under the guise of bank employees phoned citizens and convinced them to transfer money to bank cards issued for dummy persons. Money was cashed through ATMs and transferred to bitcoin exchanges.

10 members of the criminal group have been identified. Seven of them were detained in Yalta, Kaliningrad, Ulan-Ude, Khabarovsk and St. Petersburg.
The police received statements from at least 15 victims who transferred more than 2 million rubles to the fraudsters.

To cover up their activities, the attackers launched a cryptocurrency exchanger. The police identified organizers, coordinators and operators of an underground office located in a business center on the Moika River embankment.

https://forklog.com/v-sankt-peterburge-zaderzhany-organizatory-bitkoin-otmyvochnoj-na-milliony-rublej/

---

Translation from Russian.

There is a lot of phone fraud in Russia, but many people don't even go to the police for help. Many fraudulent cases remain unresolved.
Fiat money can be taken from scammers, and cryptocurrency is very difficult to take from scammers.

Statistics show that the number of such crimes is constantly growing.

They call the person and convinced them to move their money to another dummy account, its a long process, and if the person has no patience he'd rather hang up. These scammers must be very good at convincing these men.  But they are still dumb for thinking they are not going to get caught. These are not hackers but pure low life scammers.

Even with a lot of expositions regarding the techniques employed by hackers on committing their crimes, people are still getting scammed and robbed here and there. I don't know if the problem really underlies on the weak security systems of the banks (or the lack thereof) or just the naivety of people. Still a good thing that they caught members of the group on this nefarious activity. It's 2020, and they are still seeing bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a 'safe haven' on their illegal activities even though there are more eyes and ears on the scene now more than ever. No matter how many times people are educated on these type of scams, if they are still gullible enough to give their money to a stranger, or their details to someone who called them over the phone, these types of activities would never cease to exist.

We are definitely getting closer to regulation; that's my take away on the whole issue. For the state to get interested in fraud arising from crypto deceit shows a level of interest on sanitizing that industry. Before now, it used to be government placing an outright ban on all crypto activities. We are getting there gradually. Frankly, I hope the identified scammers all get to face the wrath of the law and face punishment for it.

the Russian government no longer looked at bitcoin well and this type of scams just gives more reason for the Russian government not to like bitcoin. what is unbelievable Is to hear that people have fallen into this type of child scam, really what do these people in russia have in their heads? they do not watch TV and do not read on the internet that this type of scams are full and how to avoid? and how do they not know how to differentiate the bank's phone number and go to the bank to confirm the veracity of the information? this is all weird

I'm not 100% sure who should be blamed here the scammers or the victims. Would you transfer your money to an account someone gave you on the phone?

Hello, Sir we want you to send your money to this address. Yes we are from the bank! My name? Vladimir Vladimirovich the manager ;D

Maybe we are not stupid enough to believe that easy. I'm not sure if they never heard about a scam that makes them being ignorant in this kind of scheme. Not only the scammers to blame but also ourselves who let the things to happen instead of reporting it to the authorities in order to stop them. Good thing is that it caught the attention of the authorities and take action but it was too late already.

We can't fully stop this kind of activity because some just keep silent even though they already been scammed. Well, this could be a big challenge for the government as well coz there are no regulations imposed and only it helps them in order to seize these exchangers who violate the law are the reported complaints.

Recently, i came across several claims from people being scammed in a similar way but not identify their locations. So the scammers create a fake exchange then collect maximum data from users. After that, someone call the user pretending to be a police agent and accuse him to be part of illegal activities and ask him to send a significant amount of money to an unknown address. He later cash the money out using ATMs then return it back into crypto.
Unfortunetly, most of the victims don't claim to authorities thinking that they are accused .

It's good news that groups of scammers scheme already found out and the exchange already closed. However, bitcoin's image again is used in this kind of illegal activity, the reputation of bitcoin in that country is already ruined by this kind of news. As time passes by many countries will see bitcoin as the national digital currency of illegal activities. I will not be surprised if the time comes that bitcoin is already banned in many countries because of these kinds of events.

The same is the situation in India. We've got more and more number of fraudulent cases in the name of banks. Compared to the past now people have got good awareness, and the same has made more scammers get caught.

Now only scammers in the name of cryptocurrencies have slowly popping out, and recently I came across forsage gaining popularity among common people.

The 'setup of crypto currency exchange' does ring a bell to me.

(https://www.zdnet.com/article/ukraine-arrests-gang-who-ran-20-crypto-exchanges-and-laundered-money-for-ransomware-gangs/)

I think we have uncovered and the final piece here, we always wondered how this criminals are converting their loot to fiat. So from scamming people, they device a plan to start a fly by night crypto exchange and then laundered their money and mix the coins, very brilliant. But I guess, the full hands of the law are going to catch them though sooner or later.

Well, it was quoted as "persuaded" though. It may seem stupid ( and it really is ) but it only looks like that at this point since we KNOW of what happened already. Persuasion is called that since it has the power to persuade others, through various different means, and honestly, without even knowing what's going to happen, it's really possible for others to get persuaded. Victims are probably people who were on the older side? That, or ignorant ones regarding how scammers do their stuff.

I've had my fair share of fake calls, from saying that my dad went into debt and I need to pay right now or they'll kill my day, from my mom being hit by a car and they called me so that I can transfer hospital funds for payment immediately, I suppose they used similar schemes, taking advantage of their panic possibly.

That story will happen again in the future, especially for new people who involve in crypto. If they don't learn more about crypto, and how they can store their asset, they will get a scam. It is not just happening in the crypto world, but it also happens in real life, so we need to be careful if we want to invest in something. Make sure we can research before we invest, so at least, we can reduce the risk, and the important is we don't use too big money to invest.

The scammers can convince people by telephone or text message, and that is happening in many countries because people will attract to that thing if they see about "money" inside the conversation.

Both the security systems of banks and the security systems of Bitcoin and its wallets cannot save humanity from its gullibility. And so it does not matter whether they are using fiat or Bitcoin. It does not matter whether they are chained to the old financial system or have embraced the freedom which Bitcoin provides. At the end of the day, whatever currency they are using, if someone they don't even know could easily make a call and coax them to doing and giving what the caller asks, everything will remain the same.

In this regard, I would even think that having only a bank's passbook is a world much safer than having or being your own bank.

Now we are seeing More and More Positive move from Authorities against these Fraudster and scammers and this is what The community wants to here
as this will declare their safeties in investing Here in crypto.
Even Hackers are now on track and being Named By US government and Running against them to North Korea though the
doubt is there if this will have Good outcome.

With this one by one action at least we are now taking them little by little and sooner many of them will be afraid in doing such
because they Know that this is a serious matter and they will not be tolerated in any ways.

Now there are a lot of services for changing a subscriber number.
Caller ID will show you the bank number. Scammers have called me many times and tried to deceive me. The only way is not to talk to them on the phone and call the bank yourself, and if a huge amount is stored on the account, then it is better to pay an additional one. service of a personal manager.

It's always pleasant to see a state doing its job and protecting citizens by uncovering scams. Even though Russia has a lot of problems, at least the police worked effectively in this case. I'm sure that closing this exchange is just the tip of the iceberg, but scammers and money launderers deserve to be put to trial. Cryptos and crypto exchanges lose their reputation because of such people who use them for their criminal activities. So the more of them get caught, the more common such news become and the clearer the crypto space becomes.

This is happening all over the world, not just in Russia. So this is not surprising.

More scammers must be shut down. Never believe in such of scam website in order to lose your funds.
BTC is yes trusted enough, but the exchange of BTC is questionable. It will depend on what exchange you prefer.
After fining new scammers again under arrest, will the scammers stop? Of course not, they will be reasoned and also make himself of taking the truth from everybody there.

Scammers will always scam and do their job even we are still not sure about it.
The clearness of the police to arrest the people can be said as a good market place. But of course, it will depend on you manage and also see the prospects of the coins.

I don't understand how this could happen. Are people really going to exchange large amounts of money in exchanges without work experience? On the same bestchange there is a huge pile of exchangers and all of them are guaranteed by the service itself. There were never any problems, and if there were, sooner or later, the administration helped.

The scam was very obvious, someone impersonating advised them to transfer their money to a bank address and they followed suit. These things are not in the bank's work regulations, they stick to the seven.
The police shutting down this exchange was right because it was operating against the law.

That's great,but do you think that this news have something to do with Bitcoin?
Those scammers can be considered as fiat/bank scammers and not cryptocurrency scammers.The fact that they have created a crypto exchange to launder their stolen fiat money doesn't prove that they are Bitcoin/crypto scammers.Anyway,the Russian police is going a great job,which surprises me sometimes.
Forum threads about fiat scammers should be moved to another sub-forum. ;D

I guess there are more of them. I don't think they are the only one operating with such scheme. I hope this kind of scam will be stopped by their authorities. Remember for a time before, if it is a Russian project, somehow expect that it is a possible scam.

With the operations in South Korea like seizing Bithumb, and now in Russia, I hope there will be more coming in the next coming days. We need to eradicate these scammers in the crypto space.

But the fact that this criminals do put up an illegal crypto exchange site, and mix their laundered money and resulted in bitcoin or other crypto, then it make sense that this news will attract or correlated to bitcoin in general. Why it's very surprising though, government agencies are really haunting down those crypto scam artist or criminals, might take a lot of investigative work though through blockchain and cooperation from a lot of sources as well.

Maybe the victims should have a reason why they send money to the scammer. They will not send the money without apparent reason, there must be something that the scammers promised. I just don't understand, why there still a people who fall to this scam, receives a call from a stranger and they ask for money to be sent to their bank, even though they offer lots of things that promise they shouldn't take it seriously.

Unfortunately, this is very much practiced in Russia. People are little told how to behave in such situations.
There are a lot of poor people. It is very easy to cheat them for money.

I just cannot truly believe how the people in Russia fall for an obvious and the most common scamming scheme that most scammers do which is to guise as a banking attendant and asking you to send money into a certain account. Before they do such actions, they must just call up their designated banks to confirm is such actions being asked on the line is legitimate or true most specially if it is coming from a strange number that is introducing himself as a banking accountant. This was duly not a direct assault on cryptocurrencies for the fact that it comes from a fiat bank account and used up the money they have laundered to execute a crypto exchange which is also another scam scheme.

Well, good thing that the police officers have discovered this scam cryptocurrency exchange and have put behind bars some of the members of the group but then at least they have recognized before it have gone too far out of their range. It is just bad that the scamming actions of those individuals are putting the bad impression towards cryptocurrency making it so hard not just for Russia but as well as into other countries to accept and adapt into crypto usage for they think that this is being used as a channel for money laundering activities and will serve no good which in reality people must be blamed for such actions not cryptocurrency.

I think so, as there will be incident to happen government will be more have eyes on the industry which they should have done a few years back but now they are handling it with regulation. And as there will be gullible people, fraud and scams will not be over and image of the cryptocurrency will be slowly in mud full of dirt. Believe it or not, even if there is a regulation scammers will easily cope those fences that they fronted.

That has a low chance to happen, the identities of these scammers are alphanumberic addresses, it is hard to track these people with a single clue and obviously scammers know how to get away with it. Scams are all planned.

Scams like this don't just happen in Russia, but in several other countries too. And events like this create a Bitcoin image it looks
even worse, even though illegal activities like the one that happened in St. Louis. Petersburg is not because Bitcoin is bad. But many
people who want instant money through Bitcoin investment. Therefore I don't really blame the scammers, but the victims too not
careful. It is easy to transfer money to unknown accounts, without verification first. A careless person like this should be given a lot of
education and not blame Bitcoin for their losses.

Currently, cryptocurrency regulations are being built and developed in several countries. In countries that do not have a cryptocurrency regulation this kind of crime will be more active and harder to handle. The incident has also shown that human exploitation of cryptocurrencies in criminal activities is clear. Preventing crypto-related crime will make the cryptocurrencies ecosystem healthier, cleaner, and change people's perception of this environment.

totally agree that preventing crypto crime is very good and can improve the perception that has been built so far that crypto is identical to fraud. So it is indeed necessary to clean up from this practice the apparatus should be able to cooperate. but there is also the problem that not all countries accept and recognize crypto so that if something happens it will collide with the rules and usually cannot be resolved which makes people do bad things to keep doing it again.