OREANDA-NEWS A resident of Saratov lost more than 18.5 million rubles, falling for the tricks of scammers who added her to an alleged house chat, and she borrowed 17 million from family and friends, the GUMVD of the Saratov region reported.

According to police, unknown persons in one of the messengers added a 51-year-old resident of Saratov to the "house chat" and explained that in order to check the owners by the housing inspectorate, you need to enter a phone number and an SMS code. This was followed by an alleged account hacking on the Public Services portal, calls from pseudo-law enforcement officers, and recommendations to "declare" savings and transfer them to a "secure account."

The woman believed and, on the advice of an unknown person, transferred 949 thousand rubles from her personal savings to the specified account, as well as 577 thousand rubles that she received for pawned jewelry.

a.m. "Later, the citizen received an e-mail notification of a fine of 1.5 million rubles for disclosing information about the progress of the criminal case, which must be repaid. Also, over the course of 10 days, the applicant was lured out of more than 18.5 million rubles under various pretexts, such as repayment of loans issued for her son and daughter, of which 17 million were borrowed from relatives and friends," the police channel on the Maks platform says.

A criminal case has been opened on the fact of fraud on a particularly large scale.