A super bargain that promises, for example, a Fender acoustic guitar for less than three hundred, cheated customers who believed fake Facebook profiles out of money. These look like the profile of the e-shop Kytary.cz, the largest Czech seller of musical instruments. According to Filip Černý, marketing director of the Kytary.cz store, these are professional fraudsters. As he stated, they are also falsifying the profiles of other domestic sellers of musical instruments.
The fraud, which has not yet been fully prevented, was reported by Kytary.cz on Wednesday afternoon. “A group of hackers has set up several profiles on Facebook that look like the profile of Kytary.cz. They did it very professionally, they downloaded our posts that we have on our original profile, they invited fans there that they probably paid for. Each profile has a thousand or more fans, so it doesn’t look completely fresh. They simulated some kind of communication under the profile, which makes it seem relatively believable,” explains Filip Černý.
The fraud targets the payment cards of burned-out customers. “In addition to stealing our identity, they lure customers with several offers. We noticed two, one offers a Fender acoustic guitar for 253 crowns and the other offers a Marshall bluetooth speaker with a discount of about 97 percent,” explains the marketing director of Kytary.cz. The link from Facebook will lead interested parties to a website that looks like a collaboration between Kytary.cz and the given global brand.
Screenshot from the fake profile of the e-shop Kytary.cz|kytary.cz
“Even though it’s suspicious, a lot of customers click on it. They click through to non-Facebook websites, where they find a questionnaire, it looks like a game, the interested party fills in something and then it takes them to the shopping cart page, where they enter the card number. As a result, fraudsters gain access to his card, from which they can withdraw money,” says Černý.
Kytary.cz recorded dozens of questions from its regular customers who are inquiring about the event in question. The company then knows about individuals who flew in and handed over their payment card details in this way.
“Although it sounds unbelievable, it is so well done that many people and professional musicians have already lost money. Many customers write to us, that’s why we now focus on crisis communication. We are in contact with the company Meta (operator of Facebook – editor’s note) and we managed to ban about three profiles that the hacker created. But he keeps making new and new ones. In addition, I have information that it also affects our competition,” added Černý.
Kytary.cz filed a criminal complaint against an unknown perpetrator and a complaint to the Czech Telecommunications Authority. “He should solve it at the international level within the framework of the DSA standard,” said Černý.
We are investigating the statements of the Police of the Czech Republic and ČTÚ.
