Fraudsters have come up with a new scheme to deceive traders

Scammers have concocted a false narrative, claiming they can recover funds lost in the stock market.

In August, the new scheme began to be widely adopted. However, there are many potential risks associated with this.

In order to receive the funds back, you must first pay for the services or answer inquiries from the Central Bank inspector.

Izvestia reports that scammers have devised a new scam, promising to return money lost in stock exchange investments. This follows previous scams in which people were promised to get back money lost in pyramid schemes or cryptocurrency investments.

Recently, this has become especially pertinent as the Russian stock market has seen a significant drop from the peak at the end of 2021, leading to considerable losses for many investors. Nevertheless, the market has seen some recovery in 2021.

Maria Rumyantseva, a representative of the Association for the Development of Financial Literacy (ARFG), warned that if someone is asking to “return the money”, it is likely that they are trying to get an advance payment for services or to get confidential information that gives them access to the Internet bank and funds in it.

A legend began to circulate widely about a month ago and could become pervasive, as there are approximately 26 million individual investors in Russia. Last year's systemic shocks caused considerable losses for all customers.

According to Ashot Oganesyan, founder of the data leak intelligence and darknet monitoring service DLBI, there are several options for implementing the scam where sites have appeared on the Internet promising to return money “stolen by brokers.”

Under an officially concluded agreement, the fraudster receives an advance payment, however, this does not guarantee a refund in any way.

In the second scenario, the attacker sends a link to a card payment form and then vanishes after the payment is made.

In the rarest of the three options, criminals pretend to be law enforcement officers and demand a bribe in exchange for being acknowledged as a victim. The money must be either sent to a card or given to a courier.

The Central Bank has warned citizens multiple times that fraudsters employ a variety of tactics to steal their money, such as intimidation, coercion, or, conversely, attempting to entice them with unexpected rewards.

The Bank of Russia urges citizens to be cautious and not give out personal and financial information to anyone they do not know, regardless of the method of communication (phone, website, email) they use.