"FSB Captain here: we have your messages with a Ukrainian recruiter." Scammers are using dangerous tactics to intimidate Russians.

We thank our readers Yerzhan Musayev and Mikhail Zaretsky for the latest updates on fraud trends. Here’s what’s new. You receive a message in Telegram, or as people commonly call it, "in the telega," from a mysterious stranger whose name appears as Alexander Smirnov, and he has a Ukrainian flag on his profile. He writes:

- Good afternoon, Tatiana. My name is Alexander. Do you work at (name of your institution)?

Surprised and puzzled, Tatiana replies:

- Yes, but how do you know? And who are you?

- That’s irrelevant. I’m offering you 900,000 rubles for some simple actions.

- What are you talking about? What do you want?

- We need information about your organization’s employees. Passports, SNILS, personal data. Don’t worry, this information stays between us.

At this point, Tatiana shifts from fear to anger and responds somewhat harshly:

- Is this a joke? Who the… are you??

- This is not a joke, it’s all quite real. We’ll transfer the money to your Sberbank account.

To prove his point, Alexander sends a photo of four 5,000 ruble bills! Although you can easily find images of huge stacks of money online. After seeing the 20,000 rubles, Tatiana gets nervous again and asks:

- How do you know about Sber? How did you get my number?

- Let’s just say, my country needs help and we will reward you generously for it. We only need information from you, nothing more.

After hearing this, Tatiana, like any reasonable person, ends the conversation and nervously ponders: what was that? This guy with the Ukrainian flag looks quite a lot like a real SBU officer. Plus, the amount isn’t round—900,000. Their American sponsors likely instruct them to buy our traitors for 1 million. But what SBU officer wouldn’t take at least a hundred from a million? So he must be real!

However, Tatiana doesn’t have access to her colleagues' passport data, but maybe the Ukrainian recruiter confused her with someone else? Or was he trying to reach out to the HR department through her? What should she do? Call the FSB? Or should she consult her superiors first?

And then, a call comes in from an unknown number.

- Hello, Tatiana! This is Captain FSB Roman Vladimirovich Belykh. Do you have anything to report to us?

- Yes, I, um, was going to call you...

- While you were planning, Tatiana, we already managed to scan your correspondence with the Ukrainian recruiter. I’m sending you the details via Telegram. ...Now our task is to catch the accomplices of that recruiter who are in Russia. For starters, text this Alexander that you’ve thought it over and decided to share employee data with him. We’ll prepare fake information. And regarding the proposed 900,000, ask him for a deposit of 200,000.

As experienced readers may have guessed, “Captain FSB Belykh” is either the same con artist - “recruiter Alexander,” or his accomplice. To further intimidate the potential victim, the scammers send her a photo of supposedly secret orders from the FSB about conducting a personnel check at the victim’s institution. After that, the fraudsters have many options to deceive our Tatiana out of her money. For instance, “to monitor the money transfers to Tatiana from Ukraine, she must transfer her bank accounts to a safe account at the Central Bank.” There may also be some new, more cunning tricks, which we hope our readers will not learn about, as they won’t fall for this “scam.”

Readers can share their personal experiences with scammers with us. We will then disseminate this information to prevent and protect overly trusting individuals. Send your stories to: [email protected]