The victim of the scam shared his experience: his hands were shaking, he had no idea how many there were, how many people

These lessons were shared with Delfi readers by Daiva, a UK-based scam victim (name changed).

Hacked into account

The interlocutor said that one Sunday night in April, one of her former colleagues wrote to her through Instagram, showing that she had received a strange message from her through Facebook Messenger.

“The message said ‘hello’ and then asked for a loan of £ 230, saying that I blocked my bank account. It is spoken in English, but it did not sound like I was writing, not in those words,” said Daiva.

She immediately replied to her friend that she really wasn’t there.

“I tried to log into my Facebook, but stopped logging in because they changed my password. However, I was able to report that they would freeze my profile. I don’t even remember exactly how everything went, there was a lot of stress, my hands were shaking, after all, I couldn’t imagine how many there were, how many people, ”he said.

After regaining access to his account, Daiva learned that all of his former colleagues had received the same messages.

“But there are only two on the hook for the scam (that I know of),” he said.

Bank account

Daiva’s story stands out from other scam victims where she claimed the scammers were able to create a bank account in her name.

“My name was stolen and a bank account was created in an interesting organization, Modulr,” he said.

So perhaps Daiva’s two bereaved acquaintances were confident that they would enter their name in the “box” by transferring £ 230 each. By the way, one of them got his money back.

Daiva said that he still does not understand how his account was hacked, how it was possible to create an account in his name.

“I went to the police, there is a special unit for hackers, online scammers. The fact is that they stole my name, they got rid of my name, accounts are being created, which is a crime. They reacted to that” the woman explained.

The police investigation is not yet complete.

Named the fraud method

Under the name Daiva, Modulr is a UK registered electronic money institution that is overseen by the country’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Delfi contacted David Beach, Modulr’s chief communications officer, about Daiva’s story, but said the company did not comment on specific cases.

Modulr provides payment infrastructure services to many companies. We follow the rules set by the regulator and we take reports of fraud very seriously, working with law enforcement and our industry partners to prevent them.

We are working together to address authorized automatic payment fraud (APPLICATION). Our determination to do so is evidenced by the fact that we are the first non-bank to introduce payer identification as part of our anti-fraud strategy, ”commented Beaches.

The so-called APP fraud is described as follows: Victims are encouraged to make instant payments to scammers posing as someone else.

For her part, FCA spokeswoman Trishma Vadolia told Delfi that financial institutions in the UK must comply with relevant anti-money laundering regulations.

“You have to ‘know your customer’ every time a new account is opened. That means we have to identify it and make sure it’s real,” he said.

Mr. Vadolia emphasized the need to verify the authenticity of documents when accepting them electronically.

Rules in Lithuania

At the time, Reda Stanytė, Head of the Money Laundering Prevention Division of the Bank of Lithuania, recalled that it was repeatedly emphasized that financial market participants must properly identify a customer, whether it is done “live” or remote form.

“The Law on Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing of the Republic of Lithuania obliges financial market participants, including electronic money or payment institutions, to identify and verify a person on the basis of a document that contains data that confirm your identity (name, surname, photo, signature and other mandatory data), verify the validity of the personal document presented, make sure that the person is the same as the one indicated in your document, take other measures of security to ensure that the customer is properly identified.

If a financial market participant has at least the slightest doubt about the identity of a customer or a document presented by him, the financial institution should prevent that person from opening an account and reporting it to the police. Therefore, even with stolen data, such as a resident’s personal identification number and passport, knowing the residence address, scammers will not be able to open an account or use the account of the resident who lost the data, ”he said.