Social networks use schemes to deceive students who want to use the money allocated by the state to visit museums, theaters and exhibitions using the Pushkin Card. This is a map that allows you to visit museums, theaters and exhibitions for free. Russian citizens aged 14 to 22 can get a card with a denomination of 5,000 rubles and use money for visiting museums, philharmonic, theaters and cinemas. In addition, the card provides bonuses and discounts, Izvestia write.
The schemes are that scammers create channels where they promise to cash out the Pushkin cards minus the commission. People are attracted from community specializing in cashing and selling such cards. The size of some groups reaches 100 thousand people. Fraudsters use the desire of schoolchildren and students to get money from cards in cash.
In their activities, scammers use methods of agitation to receive money using Pushkin cards. In particular, videos are distributed in the channels in which young people claim that they and their friends decided not to visit museums and theaters, but are looking for ways to withdraw money. “This is a great way to get money from the state, but not everyone knows how to do it,” says an unknown young man. At the end of the video, they offer to follow the link to the channel in Telegram or Tiktok.
Attackers offer young people to buy paid tips on how to get around the Pushkin Card system and get money. However, if such methods were previously effective, now they are no longer working, since the gaps in the security protocol were closed. In addition, scammers create an individual entrepreneur, which is designed as an institution of culture, for example, the theater, and use these cards purchased from adolescents to pay for tickets for performances that they themselves organize. Fraudsters can also use the data of other people received from data leaks to make cards to their names, which makes it impossible for the victim to arrange a “Pushkin card”.
In October and November 2022, Roskomnadzor began adding sites to the list of forbidden information, which offer to cash out money from the Pushkin Card.
In April last year, the Operator of the Post Bank announced that of all the purchases on the Pushkin map, 41% represent tickets to theaters, 18% – to cinemas, 16% – for exhibitions and concerts. The remaining 29% of the expenses go to the Philharmonic, museums and cultural events for youth organized under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture.