The dark internet: how easy money lovers are deceived

There are also other services on these forums: booking hotels with a 50–75% discount from the official price, flights with a 40–50% discount, and much more. Plus, Telegram has a bunch of different channels, which are full of manuals on how to make very decent money in legal and not very legal ways.

The person who encounters this for the first time just explodes the brain. He understands that here it is - happiness, here is a mine of freebies! And the brain draws such amounts that make your head spin. But this also has a downside.

For every freeloader, there are people who will make money on it.

In this environment, I am a person with experience, but I also fell for the bait. Below I will discuss three of the most popular fraud schemes.

Scheme 1. Twin

On the sites that offer hotels, flights, rental with huge discounts, there are people who are organizing the provision of these services. Each seller (seller) has contacts where you can contact him. Usually it is Telegram, ICQ, in rare cases Jabber.

Fraudsters actively monitor such sellers and duplicate their Telegram channels. For example, a seller writes his contact @travelvasya on the forum, a fraudster registers @travelvasja and @travelvasyabot. In this case, the profile photos will be identical, plus the inscription in the profile “Send orders only here”. A user who is looking for a seller's contacts in Telegram by nickname may not notice the catch.

Sellers also track their counterparts and inform in their topics that people with these nicknames should not write, as they are scammers. Scammers also track what sellers write and come up with new nicknames. This is the circulation of nicknames in Telegram.

The accounts of some sellers in ICQ and Jabber are periodically hacked, so you can write to the contacts listed, but get on the hacked channel.

Here is a typical example of a merchant who described where he is hacked and where scammers work on his behalf.

Then the user who accidentally wrote to the wrong place starts to correspond with the wrong person. He asks about what interests him. When the user is ripe, the most important thing begins.

A small digression: at each forum there is a certain guarantor through which it is desirable to conduct all transactions. The meaning of the guarantor is as follows: the user agrees on certain services of the seller, for example, a hotel rental for 50,000 rubles. The user writes to the guarantor that he agreed with the seller for such and such dates to rent a room in such and such a hotel and must pay a certain amount. The guarantor adds his 10% and issues an invoice to the buyer for 55,000 rubles.

The buyer transfers the money to the guarantor, who writes to the seller that he received the money and can work. For the buyer, such an intermediary is a guarantor of security. If the seller suddenly does not fulfill his obligations and the deal fails, the buyer will receive his money back minus the guarantor's commission, since the seller will receive money from the guarantor after fulfilling all his obligations. That is, the buyer rests cheaply and then writes to the guarantor that everything went well, and the guarantor sends 50,000 rubles to the seller.

Now back to the divorce scheme. The buyer and the pseudo-seller have agreed that the cost of services will be 50,000 rubles. When the fraudster realizes that the transaction is 100% complete, his task is to dissuade the buyer from the services of the guarantor. He offers to give an additional discount, for example, 5,000 rubles, and explains to the buyer that it is profitable for him. The buyer understands that, firstly, he took the hotel cheaply, and secondly, he will also receive a discount, so he transfers the money directly to the fraudster.

The fraudster pretends to work until the hour X, and then disappears. There are people who immediately disappear and stop communicating.

The buyer starts to write private messages on the forum to the real seller: "Where is my ticket?" Seller explains to him that he did not conduct any negotiations with him. And then the buyer realizes that greed has ruined the fraer. At the same time, you will not go to the police, since the buyer also violated the law.

Scheme 2. Take me as a student

This scheme is common in Telegram. Its essence is simple. A channel is created in which an allegedly unknown hacker, a successful carder (the one who works with payment cards) talks about schemes for making money on the Internet, shares life hacks, talks about security, and so on. He advertises himself through other groups that disseminate information, thereby attracting new subscribers to his channel.

Everything he says can be found on the Internet if you search well. The schemes are really working. If you read, then it takes a lot of time to implement them. After pressing a couple of buttons on the keyboard, money will not fall from the sky.

Of course, this person writes that in this way he earned a lot of money - up to 300,000 rubles a month, but now these schemes are not interesting to him, so he merges them.

Having pumped the channel and heated up the situation there, the hacker suddenly arranges an attraction of unprecedented generosity. Messages with the following content appear:

Here is a group of 34,534 people. Of these, ten of the most agile are led to this. Maybe more. Then each one is thrown off at 75,000 rubles. I saw courses for both 300 bucks and 100,000 rubles - it all depends on the greed and the size of the group.

And then these newcomers are told supposedly exclusive information, which in fact is not. Simply, from various kinds of materials from the Internet, you can compose your own course, have an average idea of online security, understand carding schemes and sell such a training program right and left.

From experience, it takes a week to understand security, carding, methods of sending parcels, exchanges for purchasing material, setting up a computer. This is 3 hours a day for a person who did not know anything at all before.

As a result, people are sold publicly available things at the price of an allegedly exclusive from the promoted Telegram channel.

Scheme 3. And the Shvets, and the reaper, and the player on the pipe

A supposedly forum dedicated to the dark side of the Internet is being registered. The user will get to it and see the branches in which they share earning schemes, sell any services. A seemingly cool forum with a bunch of topics, reviews, and its own guarantor. But in fact, one or more people are involved in filling it. All reviews from outside users are strictly moderated.

The main task of this forum is to promote several topics on which deception occurs.

Here is an example of such a forum:

And here is what it was created for:

The idea is this: there is a shadow forum where there is a lot of useful information and there is an opportunity to buy, for example, Apple equipment with a 60% discount. This is everyone's dream! Or replenish your card with someone else's money with a benefit of up to 60%.

And then the game of one actor begins. With one of them, you agree on the purchase of equipment or on the transfer of money to your card. To the guarantor, who is also the seller, you unsubscribe about the deal and send money, and then no money or equipment.

In this case, after the transfer of funds, either all your messages are put on pre-moderation, or your account is blocked.

I hope my article will warn those who are chasing freebies and easy money. Experienced advice: do not go where you should not. Free cheese you know where.