ST 159.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
1. Fraud in the field of lending, that is, theft of funds by a borrower by submitting knowingly false and (or) unreliable information to a bank or other lender, -
shall be punishable by a fine in the amount of up to one hundred twenty thousand rubles, or in the amount of the wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of up to one year, or by compulsory labor for a term of up to three hundred and sixty hours, or by corrective labor for a term of up to one year, or by restriction of liberty for a term of up to two years, or forced labor for up to two years, or arrest for up to four months.
2. The same act committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy, -
shall be punishable by a fine in the amount of up to three hundred thousand rubles, or in the amount of the wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of up to two years, or by compulsory labor for a term of up to four hundred eighty hours, or by corrective labor for a term of up to two years, or by forced labor for a term of up to five years. with restriction of freedom for a term of up to one year or without it, or imprisonment for a term of up to four years with restriction of freedom for a term of up to one year or without it.
3. Acts provided for in parts one or two of this article, committed by a person using his official position, as well as on a large scale, -
shall be punishable by a fine in the amount of one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand rubles, or in the amount of the wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of one to three years, or by forced labor for a term of up to five years with or without restriction of freedom for a term of up to two years, or imprisonment for a term of up to six years with a fine in the amount of up to eighty thousand rubles or in the amount of the wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of up to six months or without it and with restriction of freedom for a term of up to one and a half years or without it.
4. Acts provided for in parts one or three of this article, committed by an organized group or on an especially large scale, -
shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of up to ten years with or without a fine in the amount of up to one million rubles or in the amount of the wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of up to three years and with or without restriction of freedom for a term of up to two years.
Note. In this article and Article 159.5 of this Code, large size means the value of property exceeding one million five hundred thousand rubles, and especially large size - six million rubles.
Commentary to Art. 159.1 Criminal Code
1. The corpus delicti is characterized by a special method of committing a crime - deception by providing a bank or other creditor with knowingly false and (or) unreliable information. In contrast to the corpus delicti provided for in Art. 176 of the Criminal Code, the intent to steal funds arises in this case before the receipt of the loan.
2. If the encroachment was carried out on the funds of different owners (for example, several banks), then provided that the act was covered by a single intent, the fact that the damage was caused to several different owners (regardless of whether they are individuals and (or) legal entities) does not affect the assessment of the act as a single ongoing crime.
If the role of the borrower when concluding a loan agreement masking fraud is not a guilty individual, but a legal entity that is either headed by the specified individual or is authorized to represent this organization in relations with counterparties, then the act can also be qualified under the commented article. At the same time, if a legal entity acting as a borrower, headed by the culprit, was either created exclusively for carrying out criminal activities, including similar thefts, or at the time of committing the fraud was not engaged in any legal activity, but was used only as a means of committing a crime, the act should be qualify according to the general norm of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code. It is also necessary to qualify cases of fraud if the legal entity was absent (not registered or liquidated), and the perpetrator only used deliberately forged documents containing details of a non-existent organization when submitting to the creditor.
What fraudulent schemes have become popular during quarantine?
As an example of a now common form of malware distribution, Sedakov cites mailings on behalf of reputable international organizations related to healthcare (WHO, UNICEF), which were received by employees of commercial companies and the public sector in Russia and the CIS countries. “During the first quarter of this year, our CERT-GIB response center blocked 4,790 phishing resources. For comparison: in all of 2021 alone there were about 4,400 resources,” he said.
“At the end of March - beginning of April, when the capital authorities restricted movement around the city, fraudulent services appeared: websites, Telegram channels, VK and Instagram accounts offering to buy certificates and passes for the quarantine period at a price of 3,000 to 5,500 rubles. In total, we discovered 185 fraudulent resources selling digital passes,” added the Group-IB representative.
The Khabensky Foundation reported that the mail of the director and employees was hacked Society
Popular free classified ad sites became the platform for another large-scale fraudulent scheme. The attackers placed lots there with deliberately low prices, and when a potential buyer responded, they sent him a link to a phishing page of an allegedly courier service, asking him to transfer money for the goods and delivery, Sedakov said.
The massive transition to remote work and the growing popularity of online trading have led to the fact that “the number of DDoS attacks during quarantine increased by 15%, attacks on company employees, primarily through phishing, by 10%; The malicious mailings themselves became more targeted and therefore more likely to inspire trust among recipients,” adds Alexey Pavlov, head of the Solar JSOC services promotion department. “In addition, a clear trend has been the increase in the number of information leaks through company employees. It has become more difficult for IT and information security services of organizations to control personnel, so some employees have fallen into the illusion of impunity for their actions,” he states.
In addition to fake online stores, “which did not deliver, but stole payment data,” there was a “significant increase in the number of sites offering supposedly simple and quick earnings, for example, the promise of earning money by mining cryptocurrency,” said Artem Gavrichenkov, technical director of Qrator Labs: “This can be explained by the fact that a number of people have had their personal income reduced during the global pandemic and have become more susceptible to offers to earn a lot of money in a simple and quick way.”
“In April, Kaspersky Lab experts identified 58 pages mimicking Avito, and in July - already 201. The total number of detected fakes for this site in seven months exceeded 500. We also observed the emergence of a large number of suspicious resources allegedly promising social payments due to the pandemic or offering to complete a survey for a large reward. But you can receive money only after transferring the “fixing payment” or “commission”. As a result, money goes to the criminals. The activity of criminals calling bank clients is also growing,” lists leading Kaspersky Lab expert Sergey Golovanov.
“Criminals skillfully integrate themselves into the news agenda. Thus, most recently they began to exploit the topic of the vaccine against COVID-19: from August 11 to 19, 107 domains containing the substring vaccin in the name and related to the coronavirus and the vaccine were registered in the most popular domain zones .com and .ru. Some of these resources can subsequently be used by attackers for phishing,” said Evgeniy Voloshin, director of the BI.ZONE expert services unit, adding that, according to the company’s estimates, the number of phishing emails addressed to legal entities has increased by 50% since March.
Second commentary to Art. 159.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation
1. The subject of the crime is funds provided by the lender to the borrower under the terms of the loan agreement. Lenders can be financial institutions (banks, funds, associations), individual entrepreneurs without forming a legal entity, as well as individuals with available funds.
2. The objective side consists of the theft of funds received from a creditor by fraudulently providing knowingly false or unreliable information. The list of documents with the necessary information is established by the lender in relation to a certain type of loan (commercial, mortgage, consumer). Fraud in the field of lending involves the fact that the submitted documents contain false and (or) unreliable information (for example, information about the business situation or financial condition of the borrower).
3. The crime is completed from the moment the borrower receives a loan in the form of cash or transfers the loan amount to his current account.
4. The subjective side of the crime is characterized by direct intent that arose before the conclusion of the loan agreement. The motive for the crime is selfish.
5. The subject of the crime is a person who has reached the age of 16 years, including an individual entrepreneur, the head of a commercial or non-profit organization.
6. Qualifying feature (Part 2 of Article 159.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) - commission of a crime by a group of persons by prior conspiracy.
7. This type of fraud is recognized as particularly qualified when it is committed using an official position or on a large scale (Part 3 of Article 159.1) or on an especially large scale, as well as by an organized group (Part 4 of Article 159.1 of the Criminal Code).
The large size of the type of fraud under consideration means that the value of the property exceeds 1.5 million, and a particularly large one - 6 million rubles. (note to Article 159.1 of the Criminal Code).
A Brief Theory of Deception
What makes bank employees commit illegal acts?
At first glance, clerks should be vitally interested in the well-being and prosperity of their organization, which not only raises their personal status, but also has a positive effect on wages. This is not entirely true. It is the increase in salary that most often becomes the cause of fraud. The salary of a loan specialist at any bank consists of two parts: salary and bonuses. The monthly premium directly depends on the number of concluded agreements for the issuance of targeted loans. In an effort to increase the premium, such specialists themselves advise the potential client to indicate deliberately false data in the questionnaire: non-existent property or a higher level of income. As a result, a person receives an amount that he cannot physically repay, which often leads to troubles with collection agencies. The credit manager receives a bonus, the bank suffers losses.
Such schemes are exposed by the internal security service, but are far from the only cases of fraud.
Third commentary to Article 159.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation
1. In accordance with Federal Law No. 207-FZ of November 29, 2012, the Criminal Code was supplemented with special rules on liability for fraud in certain areas of economic activity. The legislator, while maintaining all the signs of fraud, pays main attention to the specifics of a particular activity. Article 159.1 will apply exclusively in the field of lending. It should be remembered that the loan agreement, by virtue of Art. Art. 819, 820 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation must be legal in form and content. You can also highlight the features of the subject of the crime: funds in rubles or foreign currency received in the form of a loan from a bank or other borrower.
2. The most important feature of the objective side of the crime is a specific method - deception, expressed in the provision of knowingly false and (or) unreliable information. These actions allow the perpetrator to take possession of the borrower’s funds, which indicates the presence of a causal connection between the actions and the consequences that occur.
3. It will be necessary to prove that the perpetrator’s intent to seize funds arose before receiving them. If a crime is not completed due to reasons beyond the perpetrator’s control, his actions are considered an attempt.
4. The subject of this crime is a special one - a natural, sane person who has reached 16 years of age and is a borrower.
5. Part 2 of the commented article provides for liability for the commission of a crime by a group of persons by prior conspiracy (see commentary to Article 35 of the Criminal Code).
Part 3 implies liability for a person who used his official position to commit such fraud, as well as when committing a crime on a large scale (we believe that interest on the loan is not taken into account when determining the amount of theft, but is considered as lost profit). In Part 4, liability is increased for the commission of a crime by an organized group of persons (see Article 35 of the Criminal Code) or for theft on an especially large scale. The amounts for special types of fraud (Articles 159.3, 159.4, 159.5, 159.6) differ from the traditional amounts of theft and are established in the footnote to this article. Large size is the value of property exceeding one million five hundred thousand rubles, and especially large - six million rubles. ‹ Article 159. FraudUp Article 159.2. Fraud in receiving payments ›
Fraud in cash management
Here we are talking about openly illegal actions on the part of bank employees, however, they can be very difficult to prove. For example:
- Pulling banknotes from a stack. An ordinary sleight of hand works when 1-2 bills are quietly removed from a wad of money given to the client. The shortage is discovered only at home, when it is almost impossible to prove the fact of deception.
- Substitution. Sometimes cashiers add counterfeit money to real money. People are accustomed to believing that all banknotes in banks are checked for authenticity. When a forgery is discovered, it is impossible to prove that this particular bill was received at the bank.
- Fraud with personal account. A few investors know the status of their account down to the last penny. Therefore, minor write-offs usually go unnoticed. If the customer discovers unauthorized transactions, the money is usually returned and the illegal activity is explained away as an error.
This category includes unauthorized access by unscrupulous bank employees to clients' deposit boxes. In such situations, securities and other material assets are stolen. The trick is that if the involvement of a bank employee in the theft is not proven, the client cannot claim compensation for losses.
Important: In order not to become a victim of cash settlement center employees, you must always check the compliance of the amount issued, and, if possible, the authenticity of the bills.
Where to go when faced with fraud
Much depends on the form of fraud and the alleged culprit. When faced with illegal actions, you need to contact the following authorities:
- bank security service or branch management;
- law enforcement agencies and prosecutors;
- Central Bank.
It should be noted that each structural unit is limited in its powers. For example, if a person is a victim of telephone fraud, law enforcement agencies will deal with the matter. When the alleged attacker is a bank employee, the internal security service can deal with him.
Attention: telephone scammers
Recently, fraud with bank cards has been gaining momentum.
These payment instruments involve remote control of a current account, so this opens up new opportunities for criminals. To be fair, we note that banks usually have nothing to do with this: third parties are trying to take possession of citizens’ funds in order to obtain personal gain. Considering that bank cards are usually linked to the owner’s phone number, the following methods of fraud are used here:
- Taking advantage of this situation, fraudsters can freely withdraw all the money from the card using a SIM card from a lost phone;
- SMS distribution: a message is received that a bank card has been blocked, and the attacker, posing as a bank employee, asks for the card number or code word to restore functionality.
In addition, Internet fraud is widespread. By downloading unverified applications from the Internet, a person “plants” a virus on his phone. The malicious program creates a fake mobile banking window where a person enters personal data, giving attackers access to their personal account. Such viruses usually block bank SMS notifications about withdrawals, so the person does not even suspect that the account is empty.
Important: When receiving messages about blocking of a bank card, you need to call the bank yourself and clarify the situation. Bank employees never ask clients for personal information!
Bank security measures
These responsibilities are assigned to the security service, which checks the purity of the transaction at the stage of drawing up the contract.
Such preventive measures are usually aimed at preventing fraudulent activities on the part of the borrower. However, during inspections, illegal actions on the part of employees of a financial organization often come to light. To be fair, we note that banks usually do not let fraud on the part of their employees go to waste. Credit and financial institutions are vitally interested in attracting customers and selling on the banking services market. Therefore, detected violations, at a minimum, lead to the dismissal of unscrupulous employees. Cases are often referred to law enforcement agencies and the perpetrators face criminal penalties.
