The perpetrators pretend to be acquaintances or relatives in the chat and then ask for money: The President of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, has warned against fraud attempts in messenger services. In the first eight months of 2022 alone, the police registered 40,000 such cases of fraud, with damage totaling 22 million euros, he told the newspapers of the Funke media group. The perpetrators were successful in 30 percent of the cases.
The scam: “Here, those affected receive a chat message from an unknown number from a supposedly familiar sender with the note: “My old cell phone is broken, this is my new cell phone number, delete the old one and please save it.” But behind it there’s a criminal there,” Münch said. The perpetrator builds trust. “And at some point you get the message that you urgently need to pay bills, but your own online banking isn’t working yet because of the new mobile phone. The goal: a referral to the perpetrators.”
