Beware of fraudsters!

Financial fraudsters continue to actively draw people into their schemes. Over the five months since the beginning of 2022, law enforcement agencies in Kazakhstan registered more than 17,800 criminal cases under the article «Fraud», including more than 8,000 cases of internet fraud and 127 cases involving payment cards. This is almost 20% more than in the period from January to April 2022.

New fraud schemes are refined versions of old methods of deception. The main goal of the criminals is to gain access to people's personal data and their bank accounts.

Today's fraudsters use social engineering: they attack their victims with various psychological and sociological techniques, manipulation and IT tools. As a result, the person voluntarily hands the social engineers everything they need: payment card details, e-mail and mobile banking passwords, and other confidential information.

Scheme: telephone fraud

On the phone, social engineers often introduce themselves as people from whom one does not usually expect a trick: employees of banks, of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, of law enforcement agencies, of the Economic Investigations Department, or of tax and utility services.

Fraudsters use various caller-ID spoofing services, for example SIP telephony, so they can easily spoof even the four-digit call-centre number of any bank.

For instance, criminals may call pensioners and, introducing themselves as bank employees, report that someone is trying to withdraw money from their card. To prevent this, the customer is told they must urgently transfer the funds to a «safe account». All the while the fraudsters hurry the victim and apply emotional pressure.

Another scheme involves a so-called «mistaken» transfer. A sum of money really does arrive in your account. A person then calls, says they transferred the money to you by accident and asks you to return it. Afterwards, however, it turns out that a loan — and often more than one — has been taken out in your name: since you received that money and transferred it yourself, you thereby confirmed receipt of the loan.

Be attentive and vigilant! The first thing to do is to end the conversation and call the organisation on whose behalf you were contacted yourself, dialling the number listed on its official website. If you were called by the bank where you hold an account, its contact number can be found on the reverse side of your card.

Under no circumstances follow the caller's instructions: do not transfer money, do not install questionable applications, and do not disclose SMS codes. If money you were not expecting arrives in your account, contact your bank and ask to cancel the transfer.

Advice: do not trust strangers who start talking about money! Never disclose your personal data or card details: the CVC/CVV code, the PIN, or the expiry date. Bank employees will never ask for this information over the phone!

Material prepared using information from the fingramota.kz portal.