Expecting a gift? Scammers are tricking Sverdlovsk residents with a New Year's scheme

      On December 24 a resident of Yekaterinburg, Ekaterina, received a call from an unknown number. According to the woman, a young man was on the line who said that a courier would arrive to her shortly.

      “They told me that a delivery had been arranged in my name and gave the address of my workplace. I was surprised where they got that information. In reply I heard that ‘colleagues decided to congratulate you on the upcoming New Year,’” Ekaterina told KP‑Yekaterinburg.

      At that moment all her colleagues were at work with her, which made her suspicious. However, the caller continued to insist that the courier would bring a card, sweets and a bouquet of flowers to the exact address given.

      “In the end I agreed and said I would wait. They promised that the courier would contact me within an hour. Later I received an SMS with a code, and then they called again and asked me to read it out, supposedly to confirm the parcel’s delivery. I hung up immediately,” Ekaterina says.

      After that the woman’s phone was literally ringing off the hook, but she didn’t answer any of the calls. After some time the attempts to contact her ceased. What might have happened if the Yekaterinburg resident had given the code from the SMS remains anyone’s guess.

      Such codes are most often used by fraudsters to hack into personal accounts on the Gosuslugi portal. Once they gain access, the attackers can take out loans in the victim’s name or start blackmailing them.