“The Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia have completed the preliminary investigation of a criminal case against the alleged leaders and members of an organized group that specialized in fraud in the sphere of computer information.

During the investigation, it was established that the organizers of the group were two twin brothers from St. Petersburg. They created twin sites for Russian lending and financial institutions, which outwardly resembled the web pages of the original remote banking systems. Trying to enter the bank's Internet resource, the victims entered the login and password of their “Personal Account” on the sites created by the cyber-criminals, thus providing them with access to their personal data.

Then the scams made a phone call to the client of the credit institution and, posing as technical support employees, under the pretext of troubleshooting, demanded to report the security codes sent by the bank. The victims dictated these codes by phone or entered on the falsified Internet page, making it possible to transfer their funds to accounts controlled by the scams.

Some of the organized group members performed the functions of cashing out the stolen funds and hiding the traces of the theft. For this, they used SIM cards and bank accounts registered to people who were not aware of the defendants’ illegal activities.

Operational support of the investigation was provided by officers of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Affairs Administration for the South-Western Administrative District of the MIA of Russia GA for Moscow. The alleged organizers of the group were charged of committing crimes under Articles 272, 273 and 159.6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Three young people from Moscow, Moscow and Kaliningrad regions are also accused of fraud committed by an organized group in the sphere of computer information.

The preliminary investigation has been completed, the criminal case with the indictment approved by the prosecutor has been sent to the court for consideration on the merits,” said the Spokesperson for the MIA of Russia Irina Volk.