They Promise Prisoner Exchange for Money and Rob Families: Ombudsman Warned of Increased Fraud
Kyiv • UNN
The Ombudsman warns about fraudsters who exploit prisoner exchange schemes and extort money from families. They impersonate government officials and demand money for inclusion in exchange lists.
Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets warned about the activation of fraudsters who use new cynical schemes, including hostile IPSOs, to manipulate families of prisoners of war and missing persons. This was reported by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights reported on Telegram, UNN writes.
Unfortunately, recently we have been recording the activation of fraudsters again, who are trying to take advantage of the difficult emotional state of the families of our Defenders
He cited the most common schemes used by criminals:
- "inclusion in the exchange list": fraudsters pose as representatives of official structures and promise to include the Defender in the exchange list for money;
- "your relative is in the hospital": fraudsters claim that the soldier is in serious condition and needs urgent treatment, for which funds must be transferred immediately;
- Extortion and intimidation: attackers call relatives with threats and exert psychological pressure;
- extortion of bank details: under the guise of "assistance" they try to gain access to cards to which payments are received.
Separately, the Ombudsman singled out a new dangerous scheme, which is an information and psychological operation of the aggressor.
Families are urged to send mass appeals to state and international structures, send evidence (photos/screenshots of letters) in private messages, and distribute these "instructions" in chats of families of missing persons
Dmytro Lubinets stressed that these actions have nothing to do with the real exchange procedure, and their goal is to "sow panic, destabilize society and discredit state bodies".
I emphasize once again that the issue of exchange is the exclusive competence of the state. There are no "paid contributions"
We will remind
On June 14, soldiers and fighters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs system who had been in captivity since 2022 returned to Ukraine.