Prisoners swindled money from relatives of missing Ukrainian soldiers: a shameful “scheme” was exposed in Rivne

Fraudsters, trying to embezzle other people’s funds, are also cashing in on native Ukrainian soldiers who are missing. Recently, law enforcement officers covered such a gang in the Odessa region.

And in the Rivne region, prisoners of the local correctional colony, who were serving sentences for serious crimes, were engaged in defrauding money from native servicemen. According to the SBU, the attackers found people on the network looking for their loved ones, participants in hostilities.

The attackers presented themselves to them as servicemen and offered “help” for money in establishing the whereabouts and state of health of the missing soldiers or even releasing them from captivity. The cost of such “services” ranged from 3,000 to 100,000 hryvnias, depending on the emotional and psychological state of people and their ability to pay.

The organizers of the fraudulent scheme asked people to transfer funds to the bank cards of a friend of one of the prisoners, and after receiving the money they no longer contacted the relatives of the missing.

During searches at the place of serving the sentence and at the address of residence of one of the prisoners, law enforcement officers seized:

• mobile phones and tablets;

• almost 2 dozen SIM cards of different mobile operators, on which fake accounts were registered and from which the attackers called the victims;

• 5 bank cards, which received money from the victims;

• rough notes red-handed.

The issue of informing the defendants about suspicion under Part 3 of Art. 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (fraud).

It should be noted that scammers are trying to deceive people by offering supposedly international financial assistance and using fake websites of well-known banks.

SBU photo