In the Kostanay Region, bank employees and police prevented the transfer of 1.9 million tenge to a foreign account. An elderly man intended to send the money after seeing a TikTok ad for a car at a 30% discount, reports infohub.kz.
Bank staff suspected the client might be a fraud victim and contacted the police. Officers who arrived stopped the transfer and escorted the man to the regional police department, where they held an explanatory talk with him.
It turned out that after viewing the ad, the man contacted unknown individuals. Further communication took place via WhatsApp: the interlocutors gave him instructions and urged him to transfer the money as soon as possible.
When the man said he was at the police station, they began actively messaging him and demanding he leave immediately to complete the transfer. According to the department, the interlocutors also tried to intimidate him, claiming the car was already at customs and that a payment delay would cause problems.
The transfer did not go through, and the 1.9 million tenge was saved.
Police urged the public not to trust ads for goods and cars with suspiciously large discounts, not to follow instructions from unknown individuals, and not to send money to unfamiliar accounts. If in doubt, one should stop communication and contact the police at 102.
Earlier, Kursiv wrote that a fraud suspect was extradited from Russia to Kazakhstan over a sum exceeding 106 million tenge. According to the investigation, in 2021-2022 he took money from three people, promising to purchase and deliver cars from abroad. The suspect was placed in a pretrial detention center.