In Ternopil, a 20-year-old girl wanted to make money online and lost her money

Working on the Internet – the desire to make easy money turned into a loss of money and open criminal proceedings for a resident of the regional center.

The applicant said that she was watching a TikTok feed when she suddenly came across a live broadcast of one of the users. An unknown man showed two similar photos and asked viewers to note in the comments the differences that people noticed. The Ternopil woman had been watching the broadcast for a long time when the author of the broadcast dropped a link to his Telegram channel in the posts.

The girl followed the link and joined the group. The participants wrote to the guy words of gratitude for the opportunity to easily earn money and dropped screenshots of money being credited. The Ternopil woman wrote to the user without hesitation and found out the terms of earning. The man replied: that in fact the amount of payment depends on the amount invested. A person sends money to his account and as a result of the circulation of funds to the «client» the invested amount and a percentage of the turnover are returned.

Then the 20-year-old girl transferred money for the first time and waited for a notification about the earnings being credited, but the money never arrived. The scammer convinced the girl that the earnings were genuine and sent the fellow countryman a fake screenshot of the funds transfer. As a result, within two weeks the girl made hundreds of transactions for a considerable amount. The Ternopil resident realized that she had been scammed when her own funds ran out, and the earnings never arrived in her account.

Law enforcement officers are establishing the exact amount of the damages.

Investigators entered information about the incident into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations in accordance with Part 4 of Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (fraud).

According to the head of the psychological support department of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ternopil Region Main Police Department Mykhailo Kozyuk, children and adolescents are most often at risk. Due to their constant presence on social networks and in the IT environment, they can easily fall for the scammers. Using not-so-cunning manipulations of teenagers' values, such as the desire to get rich quickly, scammers manipulate, involving them and offering them various benefits in a short period of time, without making any effort for this.

Police officers emphasize that it is best for parents to learn to talk to their children about Internet safety. They should help develop critical thinking, teach them to make reasoned choices about their behavior. It is necessary to tell the younger generation about various situations that may arise if certain actions are taken, and be sure to emphasize the consequences, reports the Ternopil Region Police Communications Department.