A female employee of a university in Kirov lost 218,000 rubles after the "deletion of data from the employee database".

      A 59-year-old employee of one of Kirov’s universities fell victim to scammers: she lost 218,000 rubles after believing a story about the “need to remove personal data from the employee database.”

      According to the police, the woman received a message in the Telegram messenger purporting to be from the training center where she had indeed worked previously. She was told that an “archive digitization” was underway and was asked to follow a link to exclude her personal data from the database. To confirm, she had to enter a code sent to her. Given the familiar name of the organization, the Kirov resident did not suspect anything.

      Almost immediately after entering the code, she began receiving notifications about attempts to take out microloans in her name. She was then contacted by a “Gosuslugi operator” and a “treasury employee,” who convinced her that she needed to speak with a “representative of the FSB.”

      A scammer posing as a special services employee said that a power of attorney had been issued for a third party to obtain a loan in the Kirov woman’s name, and even sent a forged photo of the document. He strongly urged her not to go to the police so as “not to interfere with operational work.” To “cancel the loan” she was allegedly required to take out an “offsetting” loan of 400,000 rubles.

      When banks refused to issue the loan to her, the pseudo-employees suggested she gather all her cash and pawn her gold jewelry. The victim did so, transferring 218,000 rubles to the fraudsters. After that all contacts were deleted and the messenger was cleared of correspondence.

      The police have opened a criminal case and are conducting an investigation.