Phone scammers were united in a community.
The OPS case involves 14 accused and 240 victims.
As it became known to Kommersant, the Presnensky Court of Moscow began the trial of fourteen alleged members of an organized criminal community (OPS) specializing in telephone fraud. One of the leaders of the OPS, according to investigators, is Dmitry Sholdyshev, who was issued by the law enforcement agencies of Belarus at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia in the spring of 2021. Members of the criminal community are charged with embezzlement of funds from bank accounts of citizens. In most cases, fraudsters were represented by employees of credit institutions. In the case file of 240 victims, the damage caused to them amounted to 84.6 million rubles.
At the trial of the criminal community, a representative of the prosecutor's Office is currently announcing the indictment. This will take more than one session, as the document has more than 500 pages of typewritten text.
As follows from the materials of the criminal case, it was initiated under Part 1 of Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation of a criminal community for the purpose of committing serious or especially serious crimes) by the main investigation department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow in the summer of 2021. According to the police investigation, the management of the OPS was carried out by Dmitry Sholdyshev, Artem Liberov, Nikita Batvinsky and a certain Balayan (who is wanted).
The purpose of the criminal community, structurally divided into four groups, according to the case materials, was to steal funds from citizens ' bank accounts. Schemes of deceiving victims were unassuming and similar, a case of one of the residents of Yekaterinburg is a good example. According to the case file, at the height of the pandemic, in July 2020, phone fraudsters called the victim on her mobile phone from one of the subscriber numbers to which forwarding from the IP-telephony number was installed.
They introduced themselves as employees of the security service of Bank Yekaterinburg PJSC and informed the victim that they had recorded unauthorized transactions from the woman's bank card.
At the same time, she was offered assistance in canceling the actions of yet unidentified attackers to transfer her funds. A resident of Yekaterinburg agreed. After that, she was asked to give the bank card number and the CVC code located on the reverse side. The Yekaterinburg resident, being sure that she was actually communicating with the bank's security service employee, gave the scammers all the required details of her card, and at the same time provided the opportunity to dispose of funds online.
Having thus gained access to the money, the scammers went online to the site of the Svyaznoy Network LLC store and remotely placed an order for OPS member Nikita Batvinsky to purchase various Apple iPhone mobile phones in the capital. The payment was made by the victim's bank card.
Then, according to the case file, Dmitry Sholdyshev ordered Nikita Batvinsky and Artem Liberov to pick up iPhones from Svyaznoy stores located at different addresses in the city and region. Those, however, not wanting to appear in the salons where video surveillance is installed, personally, as follows from the case materials, made an order for the delivery of goods. On behalf of the defendants, according to the investigation materials, expensive mobile phones from stores were delivered to the shopping center "Gorbushkin Dvor", where, according to the investigation, Artem Liberov was engaged in their sale. The scammers divided the money received from the sale among themselves depending on the role of one or another alleged OPS participant in a particular scam (according to the case file, the hidden Balayan was engaged in income distribution).
Another common scheme of embezzlement of citizens ' funds, according to the police investigation, was the following.
Posing as an employee of the bank's security service, the attacker informed the potential victim that her bank account had been hacked and in order to save funds, it was necessary to transfer them to another, secure one, whose details the fraudster immediately indicated.
At the same time, the fraudsters during the conversation put constant psychological pressure on the victim to speed up the process of transferring money, while assuring that the "criminals" would certainly be exposed.
As part of the investigation of the criminal case on the criminal community, the investigation identified 240 victims from different regions of Russia, from whom, as the police estimated, the defendants stole a total of 84.6 million rubles.
The OPS case involves 14 accused and 240 victims.
As it became known to Kommersant, the Presnensky Court of Moscow began the trial of fourteen alleged members of an organized criminal community (OPS) specializing in telephone fraud. One of the leaders of the OPS, according to investigators, is Dmitry Sholdyshev, who was issued by the law enforcement agencies of Belarus at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia in the spring of 2021. Members of the criminal community are charged with embezzlement of funds from bank accounts of citizens. In most cases, fraudsters were represented by employees of credit institutions. In the case file of 240 victims, the damage caused to them amounted to 84.6 million rubles.
At the trial of the criminal community, a representative of the prosecutor's Office is currently announcing the indictment. This will take more than one session, as the document has more than 500 pages of typewritten text.
As follows from the materials of the criminal case, it was initiated under Part 1 of Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation of a criminal community for the purpose of committing serious or especially serious crimes) by the main investigation department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow in the summer of 2021. According to the police investigation, the management of the OPS was carried out by Dmitry Sholdyshev, Artem Liberov, Nikita Batvinsky and a certain Balayan (who is wanted).
The purpose of the criminal community, structurally divided into four groups, according to the case materials, was to steal funds from citizens ' bank accounts. Schemes of deceiving victims were unassuming and similar, a case of one of the residents of Yekaterinburg is a good example. According to the case file, at the height of the pandemic, in July 2020, phone fraudsters called the victim on her mobile phone from one of the subscriber numbers to which forwarding from the IP-telephony number was installed.
They introduced themselves as employees of the security service of Bank Yekaterinburg PJSC and informed the victim that they had recorded unauthorized transactions from the woman's bank card.
At the same time, she was offered assistance in canceling the actions of yet unidentified attackers to transfer her funds. A resident of Yekaterinburg agreed. After that, she was asked to give the bank card number and the CVC code located on the reverse side. The Yekaterinburg resident, being sure that she was actually communicating with the bank's security service employee, gave the scammers all the required details of her card, and at the same time provided the opportunity to dispose of funds online.
Having thus gained access to the money, the scammers went online to the site of the Svyaznoy Network LLC store and remotely placed an order for OPS member Nikita Batvinsky to purchase various Apple iPhone mobile phones in the capital. The payment was made by the victim's bank card.
Then, according to the case file, Dmitry Sholdyshev ordered Nikita Batvinsky and Artem Liberov to pick up iPhones from Svyaznoy stores located at different addresses in the city and region. Those, however, not wanting to appear in the salons where video surveillance is installed, personally, as follows from the case materials, made an order for the delivery of goods. On behalf of the defendants, according to the investigation materials, expensive mobile phones from stores were delivered to the shopping center "Gorbushkin Dvor", where, according to the investigation, Artem Liberov was engaged in their sale. The scammers divided the money received from the sale among themselves depending on the role of one or another alleged OPS participant in a particular scam (according to the case file, the hidden Balayan was engaged in income distribution).
Another common scheme of embezzlement of citizens ' funds, according to the police investigation, was the following.
Posing as an employee of the bank's security service, the attacker informed the potential victim that her bank account had been hacked and in order to save funds, it was necessary to transfer them to another, secure one, whose details the fraudster immediately indicated.
At the same time, the fraudsters during the conversation put constant psychological pressure on the victim to speed up the process of transferring money, while assuring that the "criminals" would certainly be exposed.
As part of the investigation of the criminal case on the criminal community, the investigation identified 240 victims from different regions of Russia, from whom, as the police estimated, the defendants stole a total of 84.6 million rubles.
