A 60-year-old woman in Togliatti fell victim to telephone scammers and lost a staggering 121 million rubles. The scammers not only coerced her into transferring large sums from her personal accounts but also compelled her to depart the city under the guise of participating in a phony “Program for Protection of Witnesses”. The incident came to light when the woman’s son received a suspicious message from his mother on February 11, claiming she was leaving on a business trip, a highly unusual move for her. Concerned, the son sought help from the police and volunteers of Lisa Alert.
Subsequent investigation revealed that the woman had purchased a train ticket from Syzran to Perm. Her son rushed to Syzran where he discovered his mother on the train, completely under the control of the scammers. The scammers had duped her using a ruse involving the “public services”, eventually extracting the SMS code from her which allowed them access to her accounts. They then coerced her into boarding the train to Perm through the fictitious “System Protection System”.
Being in a state of shock, the woman could not recall many details but it was discovered that she had transferred a whopping 121 million rubles to the fraudsters over a span of few days. This sum constituted her personal savings as well as the funds from her workplace. The incident serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers posed by telephone scammers and the importance of staying vigilant against such fraudulent schemes.