In 2020, fraudsters stole an average of 13,900 rubles at a time, according to a study by the Tinkoff group “Fraud in the Russian banking sector in 2020”. Compared to 2019, the average check for a single theft decreased by 8%, but the amount stolen increased by 70% over the year.
Last year, scammers stole from Russians an average of 13,900 rubles at a time, which is 8% less than the average theft check in 2019 (15,000 rubles), follows from the report of the Tinkoff group, which RBC read . The decline is primarily due to the monitoring of large suspicious transactions by banks. “In order not to arouse suspicion among fraud monitoring services, fraudsters tend to spend smaller amounts in several transactions,” the authors explained.
In 2020, cybercriminals stole 70% more money from bank customers than in 2019, and the volume of fraud increased by 60%, setting the highest on record.
The most popular fraud channels (64% of the attacks carried out) were websites with advertisements for the sale of goods and services and fake online stores. But only 13% of the total was stolen through them. In second place in terms of frequency (13%), but in first place in terms of theft (30%) - calls on behalf of the bank.
The most profitable operation for fraudsters was the transfer of money to a supposedly safe account - its average "check" is 45 thousand rubles. Fraudulent investment offers are not far behind this indicator.
The amount stolen last year is probably close to 10 billion rubles: according to the results of nine months, the Central Bank gave a figure of 6.5 billion rubles. The victims transferred half of this money to the scammers themselves.
During quarantine in 2020, the number of cases of telephone and Internet fraud increased by 76%, according to the Prosecutor General's Office. Quarantine created ideal conditions for online scammers: due to the closure of most retail outlets, new reasons and grounds for cashless payments arose, people were more willing to respond to offers of goods and services on online platforms, experts explained. We talked about this in more detail here .