Fraudsters came up with a new scheme to deceive private investors

Against the backdrop of falling stock indices, fake brokers began to apply a new scheme. As Izvestia was told in the For the Rights of Borrowers project, complaints from victims began to appear on the Moshelovka website. The scheme involves playing on different prices of one asset on different exchanges, as well as on the difference in the price of the underlying asset and futures for it.

In the case of the victims, it was the Moscow and London stock exchanges, and the assets were currencies, oil, precious metals, especially palladium, which has gained more than 25% in price since the beginning of the year. Even bitcoin is used, which is not traded at all on the Moscow Exchange, and on the London Stock Exchange you can only invest in shares of companies related to cryptocurrencies.

As a rule, scammers reached their victims through social networks, the blogosphere or online ads.

Many pseudo-brokers, in order to increase credibility and solidity, offered to install an application through which all communication and payment went. Naturally, investments made in this way were not returned to people.

Moreover, “highly profitable investments” alone are not enough for the loss of victims. Using the flow of information about the arrest of bank accounts, the scammers demanded an additional payment for the withdrawal of funds.

As one of the victims wrote on the Moshelovka website, she had to take out a loan to pay for a letter of credit to transfer 20% of the amount of alleged profit on the London Stock Exchange, plus 5% was taken by the scammers in the form of a commission. Two more transfers were required to pay the tax and convert it into rubles. As a result, the victim of fraudsters was left not only without savings, but also with debts to the bank.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Enter arbitration: scammers came up with a new scheme to deceive private investors