Criminals earned at least ₽18 million on fake dates on the Internet

Over the past three years, the Fake Date scheme has been adopted by at least 22 criminal groups, and the revenue of only one of them for the year amounted to more than 18 million rubles. with 7 thousand transactions. This is stated in the Group-IB study received by RBC, which specializes in solutions for preventing cybercrime.

The Fake Date scheme looks like this: a “girl” meets a man on Tinder, Badoo or social networks, quickly transfers the dialogue to a messenger (usually Telegram) and invites him on a date herself. As if by chance, the “girl” has a ticket for a performance or a performance by a stand-up show star. She shows the QR code of her ticket and offers to buy a seat next to her - throws off a link to the site where this ticket can be purchased. The user pays for the "ticket" - loses money, and the "girl" no longer gets in touch.

The first cases of the use of the Fake Date scheme in Russia with an invitation to a date in the “antikino” - a cinema with halls for two - were recorded by Group-IB specialists back in 2018 after requests from deceived users. However, the heyday of this Internet scam came in 2020-2021.

In total, Group-IB discovered more than 700 domains of fake sites of theaters, stand-up shows, restaurants, cinemas, which scammers use to steal money under the guise of a date invitation. Moreover, if in 2019 there were only 25 such resources, then in 2020 another 263 appeared, and in 2021 - 428 domains. Accordingly, the number of fraudulent groups has also grown, now at least 24 groups use a similar scheme.