In the Moscow District a group of criminals scamming transport companies has been arrested. Their method is yet another proof that publishing orders just anywhere may lead to serious consequences.
Their scheme was extremely easy, The criminals were monitoring the Internet on a daily basis looking for published load transport orders. They were impersonating carriers and taking up orders. Then they were looking for transport companies or drivers and commissioned transport to them. In the end the transport company did not receive a penny as the money for transport were ending on criminals’ bank accounts.
In accordance with data of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs criminals made over 40 million rubles (about 700000 dollars or 650000 euros).
Thieves were changing name and e-mail addresses of their fictitious company daily. During the search of their “logistics centre” the law enforcement authorities found about 100 stamps of non-existent companies, computer equipment and documentation. 14 suspects have been arrested.
We checked how it works. We registered on one of online advertising exchanges with headquarters in Moscow.
According to the information on the site, currently (March 17) there is nearly 200 listings of load offers and over 600 available vehicles
Here are a few examples of orders for goods transportation:
- Sokol (Russia) – Berlin (Germany), EUR 1600
- Vytegra (Russia) – Budapest (Hungary), 1850 EUR
- Sharya (Russia) – Vienna (Austria), 1900 EUR
Access to the contact information of companies can be achieved after registering on the site. It turned out that the whole process takes only 15 seconds after which we receive full access to the data.
In the East the idea of free transport exchanges is quite popular. There are many pages which make data of transport companies and companies wanting to transport goods available immediately after you sign up. In turn, there are new exchanges which, as part of a promotion, offer access to their databases for free or at a bargain price. All sorts of conmen use these “promotions” to a large extent. As you can see, they do not even need to try that hard to con someone.
Photo: wikipedia.org
