The key facts
- A pensioner from Yekaterinburg helped detain 96 of the fraudsters' couriers, working in a team of ten alongside law enforcement
- The longest operation took four months and ended with the detention of five couriers from a single call center
- A similar operation was carried out in Primorye: a 77-year-old pensioner handed a courier a fake million rubles under the supervision of operatives
'Hunting' fraudsters as a hobby
A pensioner from Yekaterinburg named Lana has turned the fight against phone scammers into an unusual pastime: according to Komsomolskaya Pravda Yekaterinburg, whose report on her story is cited by Life.ru, she has already helped law enforcement detain 96 of the fraudsters' couriers. It all began about four years ago with ordinary conversations with the scammers who called her: instead of hanging up on suspicious calls, the woman started taking up the criminals' time, preventing them from working on other victims. Gradually she began recording the conversations and sharing them online, where she found like-minded people, and a year and a half ago she moved on to cooperating with law enforcement agencies.
How the scheme works
Lana now works in a team of ten people that includes law enforcement officers. When the scammers start working on another victim, she joins the conversation, plays the part of someone ready to part with their savings, and tries to find out the details of the scheme, while her helpers contact the real victim and warn them. The pensioner's task is to convince the fraudsters to send a courier for the money: at such a meeting the police detain the criminals, having checked the area in advance. For each case the woman invents a new persona — wigs, hats, glasses, a changed voice; once she played a 90-year-old old lady. Waiting for the courier sometimes drags on for several hours, and the longest operation took four months — during that time the police managed to detain five couriers working for a single scam call center.
Risks and motivation
Dealing with the fraudsters is not always calm: if the criminals begin to suspect deception, they may turn to threats. During one operation, police noticed a pepper spray canister on the arriving courier and stopped him before he could get close to the woman. Lana is not paid for her participation — according to her, the main reward is protecting people from losing their savings and helping to recover money that has already been stolen. For now, she has no plans to stop this activity.
A similar case in Primorye
Police in Primorsky Krai recently carried out a similar operation. There, a 77-year-old pensioner recognized a scam scheme involving a deepfake of the governor and contacted the Ministry of Internal Affairs. For about a month the fraudsters convinced the man that 60 million rubles had supposedly been transferred abroad through his bank account, and then demanded that he hand over cash to an intermediary. Instead of real money, the elderly man handed the courier, who had arrived from St. Petersburg, a package with counterfeit bills while under the surveillance of operatives; the suspect was detained and taken into custody.
