Phone scams involving FSB impersonation are on the rise in Russia.
Sberbank has alerted its clients that “FSB operatives” have called customers and threatened them with treason charges for “financing the Ukrainian military.”
Scammers tell their victims that a bank employee has been transferring funds to Ukraine from their bank account, and that the account owner is held legally responsible for those transfers. The client is then connected to the “security department,” where another speaker convinces them to make a new bank transfer.
Sberbank representative Stanislav Kuznetsov has noted that people in a state of anxiety have transferred their own funds and also taken out loans to pay off the scammers.
The scam takes advantage of the public’s anxieties about real treason cases prosecuted by the FSB and reported in the media.