Covid on the wire

The court in St. Petersburg sentenced telephone scammers who deceived the elderly, luring their money for the "treatment" of coronavirus infection

Evgeny Kazachenko and Alexei Ignatov were sentenced to 8.5 and 6 years in prison, respectively, with serving a sentence in a maximum security colony, the press service of the courts of St. Petersburg reports. In addition, the defendants will be required to reimburse 1 million 925 thousand rubles, stolen from 16 people.

In early March 2021, a phone rang in the apartment of an 81-year-old Petersburger. A very quiet male voice called the woman a mother and said that he was in a medical isolator, as he fell ill with a Covid.

- Zhenya, is that you? - asked the old woman.

“I am, mother,” the caller still answered very quietly. “You can’t call anyone here, so I can’t say for a long time.” A guy is suitable for you, Misha’s name, give him 10 thousand rubles. I need a medicine.

After some time, the young man called the door and said that he was Misha from Zhenya. The woman invited the guest to the apartment, asked for a long time about her son: in which the hospital he was, what are the chances of recovery.

“Misha” (according to investigators, it was Ignatov) answered most of the questions vaguely, but received 10 thousand. After that, the "son of Zhenya" called twice another, asking, respectively, 30 thousand and 145 thousand rubles.

“When I encounter such crimes, I am simply infuriated by the behavior of our pensioners,” admitted Maxim R., the interrogator of one of the district Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg. - Well, what was it worth that grandmother just to call her son, whose phone is in her cell phone on a quick set under number one? So no, she does not like these new phones and generally considers them harmful. That's why she did not call. And so in almost all cases: victims of telephone scammers suffer only because for some reason they do not want to call their relatives and clarify the information.

In a similar way, criminals lured the money from 15 pensioners. Moreover, in half the cases, the victims did not find cash with them, and thieves proposed transferring money using mobile applications, thus receiving the data of bank cards from which they simply stole the money.

As the investigation, repeatedly convicted by Kazachenko, who came up with a scheme with the “treatment of Covid”, found potential victims in the “population of St. Petersburg - 2012” software of Kronos. This company positions itself as the creator of the product for effective work with a huge array of information from various databases. How do the personal data of millions of Russians have at the disposal of this company?

“Telephone scammers can be very limited by holding those companies in which they receive information about their victims,” said lawyer Alexander Leontyev. - It is no secret that all structures working in the field of sociology, political science, assessment of public opinion, aggressive marketing (not to mention the Ministry of Internal Affairs, tax inspectorate, pension fund and social protection departments) have databases in which there is complete information about the age, place of residence, and the family composition of almost 80% of Russians. If this information is equated with state secrets and to punish them, accordingly, then it is quite possible that telephone scammers will not have personified information that bribes the elderly.

But recently, criminals have come up with new ways to collect information on potential victims. The other day, one of the district courts of St. Petersburg examined the lawsuit of a citizen S.

The plaintiff argued that the Internet company specializing in the delivery of food products provided his personal data (name, phone number, home address and family composition) to telephone scammers.

The man was legally savvy, and when they called him to find out the data of his bank card, he, in turn, managed to get information from the caller about where the calling not only his phone number, but also other personal data from. It turned out that the novice fraudster (experienced instantly interrupted communication) learned his information in the number of food delivery, in which he worked for only a week, but downloaded the entire client base.

During the judicial investigation, it turned out that such companies really make up their own customer database, where they enter the personal data of customers.

“Russian legislation in the field of personal data protection requires serious adjustment,” says Leontyev. - Now it is almost impossible to hold the same pizza fork, who recognized the address and phone number of citizen S., and then reported this information to his friend. Not to mention client bases of various online stores and startups.