A man has rammed his car into an army office in the Russian town of Gus-Khrustalny at the behest of Ukrainian racketeers, local Mayor Aleksey Sokolov has claimed.
This news comes amid a wave of cases in which scammers have forced their victims to carry out acts of sabotage, promising material rewards or to return money stolen from them. In the past two weeks, a number of such cases involved either lighting fireworks in shopping malls or setting ATMs or officials’ cars on fire.
“Another victim of Ukrainian scammers first rammed through the fence gates and then drove into the main entrance of the building. After that, he set the car on fire,” the mayor said.
The emergency services have extinguished the fire, and law enforcement is working at the scene, he added. “The suspect has been detained and is already giving testimony.”
“Ukrainian scammers won’t give you your money back, won’t pay you for sabotage, and you could face up to 20 years in prison for your actions,” Sokolov warned.
On Tuesday, a man set a post office in Ufa, Russia on fire, after scammers promised to return a 10 million-ruble ($100,000) loan they had taken out on his behalf in the months prior.
Earlier in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that phone scams originating from Ukraine have become more widespread. “Ukraine has elevated fraudulent activity to the level of state policy,” in which special services have organized call centers for extorting money from Russians, he said.
The State Duma is discussing steps to protect citizens from the most common methods scammers use, such as loans, the Russian leader said.
Rapid advances in technology have led to loans being handed out too easily, without due protection for clients, Putin said in his end-of-year press conference last week. He suggested slowing the process of lending down, with larger sums requiring a longer “cooldown period” in which the bank can make sure the client intends to take out the loan.