“Lockdown Compensation”: Phantom Payouts

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We are talking about another fraudulent scheme with monetary compensation - this time the criminals lure victims with payments for the lockdown.

At the beginning of November, as in the spring of last year, non-working days were declared in Russia again. Someone spent them at home, someone - on walks with friends, but the scammers chose not to rest, but to seize the moment. And they began to send letters about compensation, allegedly due to the Russians for another lockdown. We tell you what the criminals came up with this time and how not to fall for their bait.

Letter from the Compensation Fund​

As is often the case, it all starts with a mailing list. A potential victim receives a letter from a certain Compensation Fund, and in it is a promise to return VAT as part of “material assistance to the population” for non-working days. And not just return it, but by government decree "2412-53 PP21 dated 10/26/2021". To receive money "for the current and past financial periods", you just need to apply "on the official portal" by clicking on the link.

Letter from scammers promising government compensation during lockdown


But for now, let's stop at the letter itself and take a closer look at it. In the sender's address, instead of the name of the fund, there is a random set of characters - serious government organizations will definitely not allow themselves this.


The government decree number mentioned in the text - 2412-53 PP21, dated October 26, 2021 - is worth searching on the Internet: this will help you quickly understand whether there are payments that they write to you about. Naturally, no search engine finds it. The mention of non-existent documents, as well as the strange address of the sender - typical signs of a fraudulent mailing .


The use of the word “lockdown” is also alarming: Russian state institutions usually do not use it, preferring “non-working days” or, for example, “restrictive measures” to it.


The proposal to return the VAT deserves special mention. This is not the first time that scammers have taken advantage of the fact that this abbreviation is familiar to many, but not everyone understands what it means. We even wrote an article explaining when and to whom you can count on a refund of VAT and other taxes . In short, VAT in Russia is returned only to legal entities. Ordinary people can only get back VAT on foreign trips if they bought expensive goods abroad. In their own country, Russians can only count on personal income tax compensation - a tax on personal income.

The service that doesn't exist​

The link from the letter leads to the site of a certain Unified Service for Social Support of the Population. It is designed quite convincingly and vaguely resembles the Gosuslug portal. But the page address looks generally atypical for an official resource. Firstly, there is no name of the organization, instead of it there is an abstract kabinet124. Secondly, at the end of the address, instead of the .ru or gov.ru domains, where the websites of the state bodies of the Russian Federation are located, there is an unknown .xyz.

Website of the "Unified Service for Social Support of the Population". Pay attention to the address bar


On the site, the victim is offered to receive social compensation in the amount of 8,000 to 240,000 rubles. Money, as they say in the message, will go to the card within 15-20 minutes. But you need to act quickly - the deadline for submitting an application is limited. This is typical behavior of scammers: they rush the victim so that she does not have time to make an informed decision.


To find out the amount of the payment, you need to fill out a questionnaire: enter your full name, “last three digits of your passport” and click on the red button. Marvelous! To get, say, lump-sum payment at the birth of a child, you have to collect a whole pile of papers , and here you need only three numbers.

Fraudsters ask you to fill out a questionnaire

Immediately below the questionnaire, the categories of citizens who are entitled to compensation are listed. Here are the self-employed, and those who were laid off, and junior medical staff, and catering workers. In a word, all those who are most likely financially affected by the lockdown and are suitable for the role of a potential victim.

Here you can also read the “real reviews” of the lucky ones, who “the site helped a lot” to get money. At the same time, there is no way to leave a review on large government sites, such as the State Services.

Fake review from a pensioner who allegedly already received a payment


If you fill out the form and click on the red button, "data processing" will begin. First, it will be a search in the databases of the “single registry” (sounds solid, whatever that means). Then the site will switch to "social insurance bases" - perhaps the Social Insurance Fund is meant. For greater importance, the victim is promised to protect her personal data using SSL encryption (what kind of data and why only during the search in the databases, history is silent).

Search for non-existent "social insurance databases"

Finally, the coveted message appears with the final amount of payments. Pretty big - more than 200 thousand rubles. But to get them, you first need to contact a lawyer and apply.

An impressive amount of payment - as much as 210,107 rubles.

hello i am a lawyer​

The lawyer in question, of course, is not real - it's just a bot for collecting data. However, the dialogue is written quite skillfully. First, the "specialist" supposedly searches for the user's profile in his database, does not find it there and offers to fill out a new one.

The words of the "lawyer" are spelled out convincingly

The questionnaire is short - you only need to enter your date of birth and bank card number so that there is where to transfer the due amount. If the victim fills out the form, then the perpetrators will have a rather impressive amount of personal data, along with the full name and last digits of the passport number that the user shared earlier. Not a bad catch - this information can be used, for example, to calls from "bank security service" (or sell on the black market to those who make such calls).

In the form you need to write the date of birth and card number

However, the scheme of criminals does not end with filling out the questionnaire. After that, the “lawyer” will write that 650 rubles must be paid for its registration. Compared to compensation, the amount is purely symbolic.


This is where the fun begins. The user needs to enter all card details, including the CVV code. Well, an email address for the complete set.

Obviously, after paying for the services of a "lawyer", there will be no more money on the card of the deceived user - you will be lucky if the losses are limited to only the indicated 650 rubles.

How not to become a victim of scammers​

Fraudsters are constantly coming up with new legends for phishing schemes. Today, these are monetary compensations to those affected by COVID-19, and tomorrow, for example, payments to families with children. In order to avoid becoming a victim of hackers, it is important not to fall for free cheese and follow a few rules of digital behavior.

• Carefully check the information associated with any compensation and cash prizes. For example, support measures for individuals during a pandemic are described in detail on the website stopcoronavirus.rf .
• Pay attention to errors and inconsistencies in the names of organizations, as well as email addresses and websites.
• Don't click on links in emails, even if the sender seems to be trustworthy. It is better to independently find the official website of the desired organization through a search engine and carefully check its address.
• Do not enter personal information - and especially bank card information - on sites that have raised even the slightest suspicion.
• Use reliable antivirus , which will warn about the danger in time and will not let you go to a fraudulent or phishing page.

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Thanks mate, interesting! Learned something new for me!