A woman living in Tashkent lost $90,000 after falling for a scam about a $3 billion inheritance from “the owner of a large company”. She even sold her house to pay the $90K. According to Umidjon Hamroqulov, an officer at the Cybersecurity Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 70% of such crimes globally remain unsolved.
The incident occurred two months ago. Nigerian scammers contacted the woman via social media, telling her that the owner of a large company had died and that she might be a distant relative of the billionaire. They said, "Send us your blood sample, and we will check it. If there's a possibility of kinship, you will inherit the $3 billion left by the company owner," thus baiting the woman.
She believed this lie and sent her blood sample. To check it, she transferred $1,000 to the scammers. Shortly after, she received "good news" that she indeed turned out to be the billionaire's relative, as her blood sample matched out of thousands checked.
Thus began the process of "formalizing the inheritance." The scammers first deceived her into opening a bank account with $20,000 to transfer a large sum of money.
Then the step-by-step "scam process" began: the woman, believing in various pretexts like document formalization, legal services, and other reasons, transferred $90,000 to the scammers in several stages. The woman did not have such a large amount of money, so she sold her house and invested all her money into this "inheritance case."
"The inheritance amount was said to be $3 billion. Therefore, the woman thought that even with an expense of $90,000, she would gain a large sum of money. We have been investigating this case for a long time. It was found that the money was first transferred to Turkey. Upon sending a request to Turkey, we found that the money had moved to European countries. Currently, the money is circulating in 5-6 countries. At the end of such scenarios, the money usually ends up in bank accounts opened under the names of ordinary people, based on stolen personal information, without their knowledge," says Umidjon Hamroqulov in an interview with Kun.uz.
He added that such crimes are committed by organized criminal groups and are very difficult to solve. Globally, 60-70% of such crimes remain unsolved.
Earlier, we reported that a doctor in Navoi city lost $7,500, believing a foreign fraudster’s lie that he would send her $4 million in cash, of which she would keep 40% and distribute the rest to the needy.
