The number of fraud cases at car service stations (STOs) has increased in Russia. Criminals are trying to deceive vehicle owners who leave their vehicles for repair by changing their phone numbers. Tatyana Ovchinnikova, director of the international network of car service centers Fit Service, told this to a socialbites.ca correspondent.
“Not all vehicle owners are aware of this deception. “As with a call from the bank security service,” the expert warned, “if you have any doubts, it is better to hang up and call the service station yourself.”
According to the expert, the deception begins when the fraudster calls the service station, introduces himself as the owner of the car and deceptively learns the details of the repair of the serviced car. It guesses the make of the car by naming a popular model, and then finds out the phone number the customer left and wants to replace it with another number. Sometimes the vehicle owner’s phone number is also learned from the vehicle’s license plate number using various databases.
After that, the fraudster calls the owner of the car and tells about the problems with its repair. When the car owner finally loses his attention completely, the attacker asks for an advance payment for the work to be transferred to a phone number. Ovchinnikova said that after receiving the money, she went into hiding.
happened before knownHe said that the number of counterfeit auto parts in Russia has increased sharply.