A woman from Tashkent lost $90,000 in fraud with a $3 billion inheritance from the “owner of a large company.” She even sold her house to pay $90,000, according to the Cybersecurity Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
According to media reports, the incident occurred two months ago. Nigerian scammers contacted the woman through social networks. They told her that the owner of a large company had died and that there was a possibility that she was a distant relative of the billionaire.
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They said, “Send us a sample of your blood and we’ll check it out. If there is a possibility of kinship, you will inherit the $3 billion left by the owner of the company,” thus baiting the woman.
The woman believed this lie and sent a sample of her blood. To check, she transferred $1000 to the scammers. Soon after, she received the “good news” that she was indeed related to the billionaire, as her blood sample matched the thousands tested.
This is how the process of “registration of inheritance” began. First, the scammers tricked her into opening a $20,000 bank account to transfer a large sum of money.
Then the step-by-step “fraud process” began: the woman, believing various pretexts such as paperwork, legal services and other reasons, transferred $90,000 to the fraudsters in several stages. The woman did not have such a large amount, so she sold her house and invested all the money in this “inheritance case”.
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“The amount of inheritance, as stated, amounted to $ 3 billion. Therefore, the woman calculated that even with expenses of 90 thousand dollars, she would receive a large amount of money. We have been investigating this case for a long time. It was established that the money was first transferred to Turkey. After sending a request to Turkey, we found that the money had moved to European countries. Currently, money circulates in 5-6 countries. At the end of such scenarios, the money usually ends up in bank accounts opened in the names of ordinary people, based on stolen personal data, without their knowledge,” said Umidjon Hamroqulov, an employee of the Cybersecurity Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The Cybersecurity Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan urged citizens to be vigilant and not to fall for the tricks of scammers.
