An investigation has been completed against the leader of the largest scam group

[Brother]

The Main Directorate of Digital Development of the Preliminary Investigation of the Investigative Committee has completed an investigation against one of the leaders of the largest transnational scam community operating in Belarus.

The organized crime group was created in 2021. It included more than 700 participants from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and other Russian-speaking countries.

The scam group specialized in stealing funds from the card accounts of users of online trading platforms using “phishing” Internet resources that imitate such sites, delivery services, and payment services.

From 2021 to 2023, members of this group committed a significant number of thefts through phishing from Belarusian citizens - more than 6,000 thefts worth more than 1.7 million rubles.

Cyber investigators got on the trail of the scam community in August 2022. Thanks to the practical application of new developments and experimental techniques, the identities of the leadership were established through investigative means, and the criminal tools used by the group and the crimes committed were recorded.

At the initial stage, the investigation was focused on suppressing the criminal activities of an organized group that continues to commit hundreds of thefts every month. To do this, it was necessary to identify and detain one of the key figures of the group - a developer of software products for organizing the criminal activities of a scam group and automating thefts. Among cyber fraudsters, such a group member is called a “Coder.” The latter used all the technical competencies and skills for his conspiracy; he never made personal visual contact with other members of the group - only online communication using fictitious data. Investigators only had his online pseudonym at their disposal.

Based on the bits of information left by the Coder on the Internet, it was possible to create a “digital portrait” of him and establish his identity. The key figure in the transnational scam community turned out to be a 17-year-old Minsk resident.

Investigators, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, planned and implemented a unique operation to detain the leader of the scammers. The multi-level system of protection against incrimination by law enforcement agencies that he built turned out to be useless. Investigators and police managed to neutralize the cyber fraudster in his apartment and gain access to all digital evidence. During the search, software tools for committing crimes and databases with information about the criminal activities of groups were discovered and seized.

For his work, the young man received 5% of the amount of all money stolen by the scam community from Belarusian citizens. For 1.5 years of participation in the criminal activities of the group before his arrest, he earned more than 90,000 rubles.

The teenager admitted his guilt in participating in the activities of a transnational scam community as a developer and administrator of criminal software and Internet resources, and spoke in detail about the group members and the crimes they committed.

Subsequently, during several dozen investigations in various regions of the country, as well as in the Russian Federation, 34 members of the transnational scam community, including leaders, were detained. A preventive measure in the form of detention was applied to 19 accused.

 

[Teacher]

A criminal case against the coder of a criminal scam group has begun to be considered in the Partizansky district court of Minsk, BelTA has learned.

One person involved, a resident of Minsk, who joined a criminal group at the age of a minor, was brought to trial. At the time of the trial, he is already 18 years old. He is in custody.

As it became known, the young man finished 11 classes, but after studying officially did not find a job.

According to the charge announced today in court, from March 2021 to the detention on November 22, 2022, using computer equipment and the Internet, the guy committed attempted theft and theft by modifying computer information as part of an organized group.

The state prosecutor, reading out the charge, elaborated on the scheme of criminal activity, the functions and responsibilities of its participants. The functions of the members of the organized group were distributed. There were drop guides, drops, weavers, workers, mentors, etc. In particular, the accused and other persons, acting as part of an organized group, as coders (software developers) provided guidance to the criminal activities of the organized group by creating and providing technical support for channels, chats and chatbots in the Telegram system, phishing Internet resources, as well as other software necessary for the functioning of the organized group including for accepting new members and creating hyperlinks to phishing Internet resources.

As for the functions of the members of the organized group, they included the development of phishing sites and filling them with content and materials, hosting phishing websites and their administration, changing domain names, developing and maintaining software and hardware tools for interaction between phishing sites and chatbots to transmit information about the actions of phishing visitors to the participants of the organized group. sites (victims), including the card account access details entered by them.

Three victims came to court today. A number of others did not appear at the court session. In total, 41 victims are being tried in the case. Witnesses were called at a later time.

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Belarus continues trials of members of a large-scale hacker group. We are talking about phishing sites. At online flea markets, under the guise of buyers, scammers offered to pay for goods online and threw off the fake page of a well-known market place to the victims. To get the money, you just had to enter your bank card details. But after doing this, the user lost money on the card instead of earning money. In the dock was a so-called coder-programmer who wrote software to maintain and optimize the activities of the entire cyber company, which consisted of about 700 people. It is noteworthy that all this work for a year and a half was performed by a minor boy, a student of one of the Minsk schools. His actions are qualified as theft of property by modifying computer information, committed by a group of persons on a particularly large scale.

Alexandra Kamko, Senior Assistant Prosecutor of Partizansky district of Minsk:

As a minor, acting as a coder (software developer for maintaining and optimizing the activities of an organized group), he stole more than 24 thousand rubles from the victims ' bank cards through phishing links. Taking into account the evidence presented by the state prosecutor, the Partizansky district court of Minsk issued a guilty verdict. The court sentenced the accused to 5 years ' imprisonment with serving the sentence in a correctional colony under general regime conditions with a fine of 50 base units, which is 2 thousand rubles.

 

[Teacher]

The Partizansky district court of Minsk has sentenced an 18-year-old member of a large transnational hacker group Air Delivery, who served as a software developer, to 5 years in prison, a fine and confiscation of part of his property, the Minsk-Novosti news agency reports.

In total, the person involved in the case, whose identity is not disclosed, was charged with 40 facts of embezzlement totaling more than 24 thousand Belarusian rubles (about 683 thousand Russian rubles).

The 16-year-old at that time started his activity in Air Delivery, which, according to Belarusian law enforcement agencies, includes more than 700 participants from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and other countries, in March 2021 as a software developer for cloning Internet resources, including trading platforms, delivery services and payment systems services and other types of programs for performing fraudulent transactions, as well as administered chats.

For his "work", he received 5% of the stolen funds, and an amount of about 50 thousand Belarusian rubles (approximately 1.4 million Russian rubles) was found in his bank accounts and in cryptocurrency.

Law enforcement agencies of Belarus uncovered a fraudulent scheme in August 2022. According to the Investigative Committee of Belarus, the total damage caused by the criminal hacker group to citizens of the country is more than 1.7 million Belarusian rubles (about 48 million Russian rubles).

During the investigation, the Prosecutor General's Office concluded a pre-trial cooperation agreement with the young man.

The defendant was found guilty of theft of property by modifying computer information, committed on a large scale, by an organized group.

Along with a five-year sentence in a general regime penal colony, the hacker group member was additionally fined 50 basic units for a total amount of 2 thousand Belarusian rubles (about 57 thousand Russian rubles), and a decision was made to confiscate a number of electronic devices from him.

The court, along with the above, ordered the defendant to compensate for property damage to persons who filed civil claims against him.