Large-scale Internet fraud in Ukraine: how people lose money trying to make money online

Work on the Internet - like, order, make a profit!” – this attractive offer hides a new deception that has led to incredible financial losses for thousands of people who have become victims of a large-scale scheme.

“I noticed this pattern around the end of October. In November we saw a real boom. I myself joined some of these fraudulent groups, the scale was unexpected. People also transfer 250 thousand UAH. This reminds me of “The Squid Game ,” EMA Deputy Director Olesya Danilchenko tells OBOZ.UA.

It all starts with an offer to work on the Internet. It's simple: like products, add them to your cart, watch TikTok and leave your likes - and you will receive your income. Usually we are talking about a small amount (from 30 to 70 UAH for completing one similar task). These are the first level participants of the scheme.

At the first level, most likely, you will only waste your time and, perhaps, even have time to earn 100-200 UAH. Of course, these 100-200 UAH are also stolen, but more on that later. Very soon you will be asked to move to the “next level”.

Here, depending on the group (and there are hundreds of them), you will be offered:

• buy goods for a large amount, return the money for the goods and receive 30% of earnings;
• open a deposit for a large amount and receive 30% of earnings;
• transfer thousands of hryvnia to the specified cards and receive your funds back along with interest.

OBOZ.UA analyzed a fraudulent group in which they give “second level” tasks. Dozens of "employees" of the group must complete the task within 30 minutes after it appears. There are hundreds of such groups. The last task is to transfer 26-27 thousand UAH to the specified card. Immediately after announcing the task, you need to transfer funds, and then publish messages with the amounts received back. Funds are transferred by real people, but messages that seem to have received funds back are posted from accounts that resemble bots. The photos of these accounts were taken in interiors that are atypical for Ukraine; in most cases, it is impossible to see the face in the photo.

Victims of the scheme send their money to the scammers themselves. At some point, they simply do not return the funds, instead of returning the entire amount with interest. And sometimes they report “account blocking”, and to unblock you need to pay tens of thousands of hryvnias. Another option is that they offer to complete a difficult task in 1 minute; if you don’t have time, they take the money.

“We (in requests for support) coded this scheme as “earning money on the Internet,” and only based on requests for support in November, about 3,000 clients lost UAH 65 million ,” wrote Oleg Gorokhovsky, co-founder of Monobank, in his Telegram channel .

Judging by the figures cited by Gorokhovsky, in his bank, on average, each victim of the scheme lost 21.6 thousand UAH. Olesya Danilchenko names the average amount of damage as 20 thousand UAH. Both figures are incredibly high. For example, last year, on average, each victim of Internet fraud lost only 7.9 thousand UAH, that is, 2.5 times less.