Transferring money to a ‘secure account’

You may receive a phone call or text message telling you that your account has been hacked and you need to transfer money to a ‘secure account’ immediately. Usually, there is an insistence that you have to act very quickly to avoid losing all your money. You may also receive instructions and an account number on how to make the payment to the ‘secure account’ yourself as soon as possible. Unfortunately, this account is under the control of a fraudster and the money cannot be recovered.

Pen-pal and/or romance scam

Victims are often single older people who are approached via social media (e.g., Facebook) or dating apps (e.g., Tinder). There is a desire to become pen-pals, the conversation is friendly and can turn romantic. Such a scam can take several months. Initially, the aim is to gain the victim’s trust until they believe they have met the love of their life. After a while, the ‘trusted pen-pal’ will start asking for money or asking you to make transfers on their behalf. There can be many reasons and excuses for this. The most common of these is sudden illness, where money is asked to pay hospital bills. Sometimes this is due to an unexpected travel emergency, where the ‘pen-pal’ asks for financial help to buy plane tickets to return home. For example, they may promise to visit the victim to pay back the money. In addition, access to the victim’s account may be requested. This type of scam is very popular to find ‘money mules’, i.e., the victim’s bank account is used to transfer money obtained criminally to ensure the anonymity of the beneficial owners. Usually, the excuse is that the account cannot be accessed at the moment (e.g., forgotten password, etc.). When a bona fide person falls into the role of a ‘money mule’, they are engaging in money laundering and this can have very serious consequences.

Message from a friend or acquaintance via social media

In this type of scam, a friend’s or acquaintance’s social media account has been taken over by fraudsters. For example, the victim receives a message on Facebook or Instagram from a friend or acquaintance asking for a quick transfer of money. This is because they have run into difficulties while travelling and need extra money to sort things out or get home. This scam can also be used to share links that infect the victim’s device with malware. This allows scammers to copy the victim’s details or identify their Internet Bank login details.

Suspicious ‘investment pages’ on social media

Victims are being offered an incredibly good investment opportunity on social media, promising zero risk and an extremely high rate of return. It is mainly related to investing in crypto assets. The victim is asked to open an account on a specific crypto platform and send the crypto to the Wallets provided by the scammers. There are also scams where an initial investment is returned to the victim in the form of ‘earned profit’, and the victim is then persuaded to ‘invest’ even more. Part of the investment scam is also known as Ponzi schemes, where victims are steered into investing in various businesses with very high rates of return. Initially, a certain amount of money is returned to the victim to encourage them to invest increasing amounts. There have also been many cases in Estonia where well-known people are used to promote investment schemes. For example, articles are published in which a well-known person praises a particular investment campaign, often with a link to access the investment platform.

Job advertisement fraud

Job advertisements are shared on social media, including the names of highly trusted companies. You will be offered a simple job that does not require many skills. The scam involves asking for money, for example, for a background check or to review a job application. In addition, there is a possibility that the victim will be directed to open an account at a bank. They will then be asked to log in to their account and use the victim’s personal information collected during the job application. It is used to take out loans, open credit cards, etc. in the victim’s name. In addition, job advertisement fraud is also widely used to recruit ‘money mules’, where the job advertisement involves transferring money from one account to another. Victims of job advertisement fraud are often selected from those areas of the country where unemployment is highest.

Fraud related to known authority or service provider

Victims receive a scam call from the ‘police’, ‘tax office’ or some other well-known agency. The call tells the client that they have unpaid fines or taxes and demands immediate payment. Otherwise, the victim is to be immediately ‘arrested’ and sent to prison. A similar scheme is used to pretend to be a service provider. For example, a victim may receive a phone call saying they are having problems with their service (e.g., internet bandwidth and coverage, or a package in transit). You will be asked to make a transfer or, for example, download an additional programme to your computer that will allow fraudsters to take over your account and drain your money.

Facebook Marketplace

The victims are people, who sell goods at Facebook Marketplace. The supposed buyer (fraudster) contacts the seller via Messenger, shows interest in the goods and asks the seller to send it to the fraudster by courier. The buyer sends the seller a fake courier service link, where they ask to insert the seller’s personal details (e.g. bank card number, mobile-ID or Smart-ID codes, etc.). At the same time the fraudster makes a transaction with the seller’s card data or payment confirmation in a cryptocurrency platform, for example, or adds the seller’s bank card to someone else’s digital wallet to abuse it. The fraudulent page may look like the ordinary website of Omniva or another courier service, where one can enter the seller’s and bank card details. In addition, fraudsters may create a fake sales environment, offering products that do not exist – victims make a prepayment to the fraudster seller, but never receive the goods.

Omniva and parcel services

Fraudsters send fake Omniva parcel notifications, trying to lure people to share their personal details. They also call people, claiming to be Omniva’s employees and trying to defraud money. There is a link in the package SMS with which it is apparently possible to pay for the parcel (e.g. customs tax). At first it may seem that this is a reliable Omniva link, where one can enter card data and, upon inserting the data, an SMS with confirmation code is sent. Actually, this is a fraudulent link and the inserted card data is abused (e.g. transactions are made with various service providers, or a bank card is added to a stranger’s digital wallet).

Draws

Fraudsters create a fake social media account through which they organise fraudulent draws or sell expensive products (e.g. smartphones, tools, etc.) with cheap prices. Fraudsters write to people that they have won a prize. Actually, this is a fraud scheme, the aim of which is to get access to the personal data of people or defraud money from them. Fraudsters send a link to the draw winner, asking to insert their card data, which is later abused.