Their new targets are 18-year-olds

Today, we will talk about a fraud incident that we are all familiar with, both from public service announcements and the messages we receive on our mobile phones. We are talking about scammers who introduce themselves as public officials, such as police officers or prosecutors. In fact, developing technology has become a very attractive tool for criminals in terms of misuse. Now, scammers using this technology have started targeting 18-year-olds who are in need of money. There are many examples of this. In reality, the scammers are never caught, but the victimized 18-year-olds can end up in prison or even face foreclosure on their homes. Such victimization has increased significantly in recent times.

Attorney Ümit Karadağ, who is well-versed in these matters and handles similar cases, warned in a statement to 12punto.com.tr, saying, 'Families need to frequently check whether their 18-year-old children have opened accounts,' and provided the following information: "While developing technology is advancing in an unimaginable way, this development is not only being used to make life easier. Technology has also become a very attractive tool for criminals in terms of misuse. Because those who commit crimes also use technological developments as professionally as possible in their methods, both to cover their tracks and to obtain unfair gains effortlessly. This situation is clearly evident in the increasing fraud incidents in recent years.

CRIMINALS ARE ONE STEP AHEAD

The worst part is that while criminals are one step ahead, it takes quite a long time to uncover their newly developed methods, and it is just as difficult to find the actual perpetrators who commit the crimes. We even believe that mistakes are made during the investigation and prosecution stages, leading to the punishment of people who should actually be considered victims. It would be more accurate to explain this situation with examples for 12punto.com.tr. Fraudulent acts, which are a type of scam we are all familiar with—where they introduce themselves as judges, prosecutors, police, etc., and obtain victims' account information or facilitate money transfers—continue intensely today. First of all, one of the first questions or criticisms that will come to many of our minds will be: “Despite all the messages sent to mobile phones or the public service announcements made, how are people still being scammed?”

DO NOT SHARE YOUR INFORMATION EVEN IF THE CALLER IS 112

Actually, it is not quite like that. When these people call, the number that appears on your mobile phone screen is not an ordinary number. For example, you see numbers like 155, 112, or 156 on the screen. When the victim sees this number, they naturally get the impression that it is the police or the prosecutor's office. However, the caller is actually a scammer. They start with a convincing impression by using technology to make the number they are calling from appear this way on the target's phone. Subsequently, when the phone is answered, they solidify their dominance over the target victim by creating an atmosphere of a police or prosecutor's office with methods like radio sounds and call transfers. Not content with this, the scammers act aggressively to ensure total control, behaving as if it were a natural situation, and use your personal data obtained illegally to convince the victim with statements like, “If you don't believe me, I'll tell you your ID number, your address, your mother's ID number; we see everything on the screen, we have very little time, we are dealing with terrorist organizations, otherwise we will come and take you, etc.” Faced with this sudden development that impairs the victim's will, they finally carry out the fraud by saying that the victim must urgently transfer their money for their own safety. No matter what, do not share your information even if you are called from such a known number.

THEIR TARGETS HAVE BECOME YOUNG PEOPLE IN POOR SITUATIONS

Before the scammers we described above carry out these actions—that is, before they scam the target person whose money they will take—they determine the account to which the money will be transferred. For them, the importance of covering their tracks is the most crucial part of the job. Because if the money is transferred to their own accounts, it is easy for them to be caught. To prevent this, they specifically prefer young people who have turned 18, who are very young, inexperienced, and whose accounts they can use. People of this age group constitute the second victim of the fraud act. Scammers specifically influence some young people they find in neighborhoods we could call underprivileged through various methods (taking them around in luxury vehicles, having them spend time in restaurants and nice places, etc.) to gain their trust.

After finding one or two people prone to committing crimes, they try to arrange for their neighborhood friends and school friends through them and attempt to use their accounts. They convince many of them with various statements such as, “Our accounts have liens on them; if we can use your accounts, we will give you something too, there is absolutely no problematic situation...” or “We are making money with very attractive interest rates from newly opened accounts, and we can't do it in the same account anyway because of the limits,” etc. This young age group is so susceptible to being deceived that, let alone giving their internet banking passwords, they even define and hand over the phone numbers provided by the scammers, referred to as 'burner lines,' for banking transactions.

BEYOND HAVING DECEIVED YOUTH OPEN ACCOUNTS AND TAKING THEIR PASSWORDS, THEY HAVE ALSO STARTED TAKING ACCOUNT INFORMATION USED FOR CRYPTO ASSET TRADING

Scammers transfer the money of the people they have defrauded into bank accounts they obtained under various pretexts, and then they buy assets like Bitcoin, etc., from the crypto asset accounts of the young people they have also deceived, and withdraw them to wallets referred to as 'cold wallets,' making it almost impossible to trace. In this way, the scammers completely cover their tracks, pitting the two victims against each other in judicial authorities.

In general, the victim whose money was taken rushes to the prosecutor's office and files a complaint. In the investigation conducted by the prosecutor's office and the police, they easily identify the young people who are the owners of the deceived accounts to which the money was transferred and ensure they are tried by referring them to the High Criminal Court on charges of qualified fraud. Because the trail of the money ends with the people whose accounts were used, and the actual perpetrators have disappeared. As a result, the victim whose money was taken and the victims whose accounts were used end up facing each other. In our opinion, the victimization of the young people who are in the second victim class leads to more severe consequences. Because they face both prison sentences and high judicial fines. Even though these types of fraud incidents are events that everyone has heard of and knows about, because the details are not explained, people are victimized by falling under the influence of scammers. Many victims even say that they received messages on their phones telling them not to believe scammers, but because they were not told that this was a tactic, they thought the situation was real and were defrauded."

Finally, to summarize, neither the police nor the prosecutor asks anyone for money.