In the spring of 2021, large Russian banks have become more likely to face complaints of customers for telephone fraud, from which they suffered. Such information from RBC shared VTB, Postal Bank, Raiffeisenbank and the Opening Bank.
Bank Postal Director Stanislav Pavlunin said that from May 6 to 18, the organization received 29 claims totaling nine million rubles. They concerned operations conducted from March to May. Earlier, only single cases were recorded in the bank, not more than five per month.
According to him, the antifrod-system has revealed almost all the incidents that have become a reason for complaints. However, the victims under the influence of criminals still confirmed the operations, sometimes even in the bank’s separation.
VTB for the same period, from March to May, discovered a two-time increase in the number of attempts to theft of customer funds compared to the average rates of recent months. According to the senior vice-president of the Bank Nikita Chugunova, in more than 90 percent of cases, techniques were used.
in Raiffeisenbank reported a surge of the “security service” calls in May, but the increase in the amount of the stolen was not recorded. In turn, the director of the Department of Information Security “Opening” Ilya Souliev suggested that the increase in the number of attempts to deceive citizens who also noticed in the bank is related to the seasonal factor.
The mail representative of the bank indicated that fraudsters are increasingly calling on behalf of the police, FSB, Central Bank. They convince citizens to contact the bank, become his client, make a loan, and then remove money and translate to the specified account. The victim was threatened with criminal liability for the message of someone about the arrival of the call.
In VTB as methods to fool the client listed calls to urgently stop the payment, an open credit message or a request for a phone number to register in the Personal Account, as well as services about the quality of services.
In March, the Central Bank proposed amendments to the Criminal Code for punishment of telephone fraudsters. Such actions that are confident in the regulator should be unambiguously qualified as “fraud” (part 6 of article 159 of the Criminal Code), which threatens the punishment in the form of six years of imprisonment. Currently, crimes are qualified according to different articles.