In Belarus, a “targetologist” defrauded more than 100 people from different regions of the country for more than $18,000. The victims appealed to law enforcement agencies and the suspect was taken into custody.
A criminal case was brought against the young man under Part 4 of Article 209 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus – large-scale fraud. During the investigation, the correspondence and voice messages of the suspect were studied.
The fraudster found clients via the Internet and took an advance payment to a bank card for the services in setting up targeted advertising on social networks, promising account holders to promote their goods and services. After that, he “was in the process of performing the work” and continued to extort money from victims under the guise of necessary investment in promotion. Instead of using the money he received to create targeted advertising, he spent it on his personal needs. When clients demanded a report on the work done he became rude and stopped communicating.
“It was established that to mislead the victims, the suspect used professional vocabulary unfamiliar to the general public. At times, his explanations were reduced to an incoherent set of terms that had no semantic load. He used pre-prepared templates of voice messages,” the IC said.
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