How scammers are making money taking advantage of the Ukraine war - Dispatch Weekly

Recent developments in the Ukraine, including increased unrest and attacks by Russia against civilians, has resulted in an increase not only of fake charities campaigns but also scammers trying to exploit donations.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 kicked off one of Europe’s worst humanitarian crises in years, unfortunately leading to Ukrainian-themed phishing emails and websites following suit. These emails ask for donations while also pretending to be rich Ukrainian businessmen looking to move their money out of the country.

For instance, we have received this email from:

Anna Ivanna: [email protected]

Stating:

Greetings,

My name is Anna Ivanna, I, my family of 2 kids and my husband live in Kharkiv close to the City Hall building in Kharkiv.Shelling has turned our city into dust, we lost my husband’s brother and the army has taken my husband away to fight for our country.My kids and I are on the Polish border with more than 1M of our citizens with nothing to eat or drink not to talk of shelter. We are asked to pay 5k Euro per person and 12k for a family of 3 to cross the border.

 I copied down all email contacts from my office database to be able to write this letter to you. I work as an IT Admin to a few governmental agencies in Ukraine.

 Please me and my kids are seriously asking for help to let us feed and remain here because we can not raise such an asking amount at the moment. Our story is not good to tell at this time because no one can understand what is happening here if you are not here.Polish police are here also to determine what jurnalist transmit. They refuse to allow them to transmit to the world that Poland is requesting payment from our citizens to enter poland.

 We can only get money through bitcoin from friends and most people that I worked with in Europe, USA, Asia to feed and pay for a few medications for my kids.

Here is my Bitcoin wallet to please assist us with 10$-20-50-100$ none is too little at this moment.

BTC Wallet Address…. bc1qxqqpv5hqs42k985m0mqauz39lt20muacre6tuj

I will never forget this help no matter the amount when all this ends.

Here is the picture of our house after the attack. The man lying here is my husbands brother. The second pic is me and my kids.

Thank you so much as you do this.

Anna Ivanna

The email address used to send the email was [email protected] protonmail.com is a well know swiss private email provider.

Luckily this BTC wallet hasn’t received any donations.

While wars create certain emotional triggers exploited by scammers, security researchers say that this is to be expected. Wars create a sense of urgency that scammers try to exploit as they separate people from their money.

“The scammers take the same scams they always do and adapt them to what’s going on,” said Steve Weisman, founder of the website Scamicide.com. Following are some of the most common scams that are happening right now.