Ukranians are taking inspiration from their Russian counterparts to help them fund their defensive war efforts.
Scammers in Ukraine are now using fake dating profiles that they’ve set up to swindle gullible men in Russia out of thousands of dollars, all in the name of supporting the country’s war efforts.
The group is called the Monetary Army. The Daily Mail reported recently that the group uses many different tactics to try to trick students in the Russian military academy, as well as cops, soldiers and those in other professions into giving them as much as $19,000.
There are about 100 scammers who have these fake profiles on the Russian dating app Divinchik. They set up the profiles with pictures of gorgeous women to lure the Russian men in, thinking that the women are actually real people.
They then match with the Russias, and lure them in.
One of the scammers, a man that goes by the name of Arthur, talked to the Telegraph recently. He said that once the fake profiles are matched with Russians on the app, they then try to get them to buy tickets for events that don’t actually exist.
As Arthur explained:
“During the dialogue, when the case comes to the meeting, my task is to invite men to one of the events that we have on a fake home site. For example, to the theater, stand-up comedy show, ballet or cinema. And then the man never meets the woman.”
At the site, the men are asked to use cryptocurrency to pay for the tickets, which benefits Ukraine because the digital currency is much harder to track than fiat currency. A pair of them usually costs around $35.
Once the transaction is completed, the scammers tell the Russians that they’re not able to make the date. They suggest that the men request a refund from the site where they made the purchase.
The customer support channel is on the social media app Telegram, and the person who’s on the other end is usually the same scammer who set up the fake dating profile. This starts the second half of the scam.
As Arthur explains:
“The system tells the men to buy two more tickets as a deposit to get a refund for the initial tickets. Thanks which they put in more money, in principle, an unlimited amount, depending on how much of a fool he is.
“They start telling the victim that he made some mistakes filling out the return form. You already put two payments, now you need to put four.”
On average, the Monetary Army is able to bring in about $100 per scam. The most money that Arthur said he was ever able to bring in from one of the scams was about $19,000 from one Russian man.
Some of the money that they bring in goes to the army in Ukraine, but a lot of it goes to pay for the staffers.
