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The loss or theft of a document such as a passport can result in serious problems. So, one day a call will ring and you will be told that you must repay a large debt on a loan that you did not take out or transfer money to an account that you did not open. What does it mean? You have encountered passport data fraud.
What is passport fraud and what types are there? How to avoid falling into the hands of criminals? How to correct the situation if you have already been deceived? Read in the article.
If your passport accidentally (dropped the document) or deliberately (stolen) falls into the hands of fraudulent persons, then the following manipulations can be performed with it:
- The scammer may manage bank or telephone cards of a person whose passport was stolen;
- Make some deals and, I use duplicate documents that can be obtained by providing a passport;
- Re-register real estate;
- Open some private company;
- Apply for a loan in the bank;
- Borrow money from financial institutions“Quick Money” type at a high interest rate;
- Use passport data for online entertainment;
Having received someone else’s passport, the attacker re-sticks the photo and, with the “updated” document, carries out his planned crime.
Attention
An attacker can obtain passport data by taking advantage of the gullibility or absent-mindedness of a citizen or the inattention of employees of banking organizations.
How do passport data get to scammers?
How can passport data end up in the wrong hands? Today, there are many ways to obtain someone else’s passport data. Dozens of websites are full of advertisements for the sale of passport data at attractive prices. Where do they get them from?
Thousands of citizens every day voluntarily leave their passport data on the websites of various competitions, sweepstakes, etc. Attackers steal this data and then act according to the scheme described above. Therefore, when registering on some sites, think several times about entering your passport data in the required lines of the electronic form.
Bank employees, employees of mobile centers and other “reliable” organizations can also steal and transfer passport data to attackers.
For example, after quitting, an angry employee of the mobile center copied it to his personal HDD data of all his customers, and then sold it to scammers.
From the above it follows that none of us is immune from a possible fraudulent attack.
Consequences for victims
What awaits those whose passports are stolen? The most common fraud by fraudsters with passport data is taking out a loan through a banking organization. It will be extremely difficult to prove your innocence to the person whose passport was used. You can try to do this only through the courts.
If he cannot prove his non-involvement in processing the loan, he will have to repay it.
Having learned that you are the owner of some private company (which was registered in your name by scammers) engaged in “black” work, you will be brought to administrative and criminal liability as the organizer of a fraudulent group.
If fraudsters only have access to the data on the main page of the passport, then the only thing they can do is apply for a microloan via the Internet (where only primary passport data is required) or in specialized counters that issue money for a short period of time at a high interest rate.
As a rule, a microloan is issued at two percent per day. However, the debtor (the one whose passport was used by the attackers) learns about the debt from collection workers only after 60-90 days, when the amount of the debt will be several tens of times greater than what was originally taken out.
How to avoid falling into the hands of scammers?
How to protect yourself? It is, of course, impossible to provide yourself with 100% guarantees against fraudulent schemes. However, the likelihood of falling into a fraudulent trap can be somewhat reduced. Let us give you some practical advice:
- If one of the organizations asks you to provide a photocopy of a document, then it is better to do it yourself;
Handing over a document to make a copy may result in its handing over to some fraudulent person.
- It is better to always keep original documents at home, not at work;
- If an employee of a banking organization asks to provide a passport to draw up a loan agreement, it is recommended to observe all manipulations with the passport with extreme caution and attentiveness;
It is at the stage of drawing up an agreement that most often the transfer of personal information of clients to fraudulent persons who are in collusion with bank employees occurs.
What to do if your passport has already been stolen
If your passport data has already been stolen If you discover that your passport has been lost or stolen, you should immediately report it to law enforcement agencies. As a rule, you can limit yourself to filing a statement with the police.
If, as a result of filing a police report, your lost/stolen passport is returned to you, you should not use it. Perhaps attackers have already managed to use your passport data “for their intended purpose” and therefore it would be better to change them.
The second step is to apply for . After the passport has been restored, it is recommended to contact the bank and request a printout of the credit history. If someone managed to take out a loan or microloan for you, it would be better to detect this on early stage until the debt grows exponentially.
Carefully check email notifications from banking organizations. If you find letters of dubious content demanding repayment of debt on a loan that you did not take out, immediately contact this bank for clarification.
Please be aware that banking organizations are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of their customers' personal information.
Life around us is full of stories and news about cases of fraud, and if you are lucky enough not to be the hero of one of these stories, this does not mean that this cannot happen at all. As for modern scammers, for them personal data, primarily passport data (full name, date and place of birth, passport number and series), remain no less a tasty morsel than money or other material property.
Types of fraudulent actions with passport data
Modern scammers have many in various ways use the received passport data of others. Over the years, only a few have remained the most common.
The simplest and most frequently used method of fraud with other people’s passport data, which has been used for more than one year, is applying for loans from banking and other financial institutions.
Unscrupulous employees of financial institutions often participate in this.
In such a case, the scammers immediately receive cash in their hands, and all claims for refunds are forwarded to the true owner of the passport data that was indicated in the loan agreement. The latter will have to regulate his relations with the bank regarding loans that he never took out. Based on the combination of these factors, this method of fraud with passport data remains in first place among those used by fraudsters.
Next, as a rule, comes the use of passport data in commercial activities: drawing up contracts on behalf of a person with someone else’s passport data, registering a company using someone else’s personal passport data. With the help of concluded contracts and companies, fraudulent theft of funds, tax evasion and other illegal actions occur.
You can also register any property, car or apartment using stolen passport data. In the same way, having passport data, a fraudster can try to take possession of property belonging to the owner of the passport data, primarily housing.
Finally, in last years In connection with the development of business on the Internet, these scammers have added the World Wide Web to the area in which passports are used. Here, passport data is needed to register on a dating site, to register an electronic wallet in someone else’s name and other frauds.
Where do scammers get passport data and copies of passports?
IN modern world There are many opportunities to leave your passport data somewhere: starting from the simple procedure of photocopying your passport and ending with registration on some page on the Internet.
In principle, all this personal data is subject to the Federal Law “On the Protection of Personal Data” of 2006, but, unfortunately, even the best legislation cannot exclude the human factor.
In a huge number of organizations in which, due to one or another life circumstances, passport data ends up, there may well be an unscrupulous employee who is ready to provide scammers with the information they are interested in for cash.
Often such information can be obtained on the Internet, where copies of passport data are required to perform a number of actions, such as registration in online games, a win-win lottery, a dating site, domain name registration, etc. In this case, copies can be purchased from employees of companies providing similar services on the Internet.
You can purchase data at ready-made databases data available, for example, from collection companies providing mobile communications services, the same banks and even travel agencies.
In short, there are more than enough options for scammers.
Important Safety Precautions
By and large, no one can give a complete guarantee of the security of personal data from fraudsters, but there are a number of simple rules with which you can significantly reduce risks.
The first rule: do not disclose your own passport data to strangers and do not give them the passport itself for a longer period of time? than is necessary to carry out some necessary actions.
There are also several procedures during which the owner of passport data falls into an area of increased risk of information theft.
In this list:
- affixing a stamp;
- photocopying of passport;
- currency exchange;
- loan processing.
During all these procedures, each person has every right to observe the actions of an employee of any organization performing operations with a passport.
If there is a suspicion that passport data has become the property of unauthorized, dishonest persons, you should immediately file a complaint with law enforcement agencies. This will allow you to avoid unpleasant proceedings and lawsuits in the future if personal data is used to commit any illegal actions.
If you have already learned about the use of your passport data after the fact, after they were used for fraud, you need to obtain a copy of the loan agreement from the bank, and then file a lawsuit to declare the agreement invalid and demand a handwriting examination.
We are accustomed to presenting a passport at the request of officials, showing it to bank employees, entering data during registration in the Internet banking service, etc. Also, no one will be suspicious if you are required to provide a photocopy of your passport, for example, when applying for a job or getting a loan. In all these situations, we behave carelessly because we don’t even think about what scammers can do if they know our passport details. What threatens you and how you can protect yourself, you will learn from this article.
Russian passport is the main document of a citizen
Let's start with the fact that a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation or an internal passport is your main identification document. For the first time, and. Also, if there is an error in it, in case of loss or. Only a court can deprive a citizen of the opportunity to use a passport - within the framework of cases provided for by current legislation.
Find out more about the issuance procedure and rules of use.
What passport data do scammers use?
Open the first page of your passport and you will receive an answer to the question of what information scammers can use. First of all, criminals are interested in, as well as full name. Information such as date of birth and are also valuable, and the most sophisticated criminals are even able to use information about the number of children, whether the citizen is legally married, and where he served in the military.
At first glance, such actions of criminals may seem incomprehensible, because the document remains with you, which means it cannot be used anywhere. But, unfortunately, one of the advantages of technological progress is that the personal presence of a person is not at all necessary in a number of situations: the main thing is that the correct information about him is indicated. As an example, we can cite various online services, where for registration you need to indicate your passport number, series, full name. and date of birth.
Now you know one of the ways that you can do it by knowing the series and number of another person’s passport. But even before the state began to create special portals, various criminal schemes were already operating. As a rule, for them, the fraudster had to have an accomplice who is a bank employee, a notary or a government employee. And then the scheme looks very simple: without your knowledge, the criminal carries out certain registration actions, for example, takes out a loan secured by real estate.
You will learn more about why scammers need passport data further in this article. But before that, let's understand how this personal data gets to criminals.
The main ways to obtain passport data are that criminals do not particularly need to personally look at your passport to find out personal information. If you go online, there are many platforms where you can sell passport data. There they offer 70-200 rubles for a set of information, and they will pay even more for providing photographs or photocopies.
Naturally, all these sites are illegal and as they are identified, law enforcement agencies decide to block them. But it is almost impossible to establish the owner of such a site, especially if it is located abroad; and it won’t be too difficult for a criminal to launch a new portal on a different domain address.
Information leakage to scammers most often occurs in the following way.
Websites and forums
If you register on a forum, online store website or other site and are asked for your passport information, immediately stop working with this site. Most likely, this project will not bring you any practical benefit, but was created for the purpose of collecting and subsequently selling passport data.
The only exceptions in this matter are government portals that provide services to the population and business, as well as payment services. In both cases, you must be warned that you are transferring personal data, and also obtain your consent to their processing.
Data on personnel in organizations
When applying for a job in a public or private company, you will not escape the need to show your passport and submit a photocopy of it to the HR department, which will be attached to your personal file. This is a completely legal procedure, without which you will not be able to start work and receive official wages. But there is always a risk that fraudsters, through deception, bribery or blackmail, will force HR employees to hand over information about employees to them.
Bank employees
Everyone has seen an advertisement in which to get a loan you need to come to the bank with one passport. Financial institutions that operate under a license from the Central Bank of the Russian Federation have the right to issue loans to the public and businesses, and to protect their funds, they collect personal data about clients. All this is legal and correct, if not for the risk of dishonesty of bank employees.
We also note that the right to collect information about clients is vested in mobile operators, government services (State Traffic Safety Inspectorate, Main Administration for Migration Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Federal Tax Service and others), local authorities and others. All employees who have access to such information are subject to certain controls and are warned of possible administrative and criminal liability. But the risk of data leakage still remains.
What can scammers do if they get hold of your passport data?
In order for a criminal to be able to produce a fake document, he will need a passport without data, that is, the form itself, and information about a real person, which could be you. Such a counterfeit will pass various checks, because in most cases the series, number and full name are checked using special databases, and they will completely match. So if you start receiving incomprehensible fines, payment notices, registered letters from public services, it is quite possible that this is not an error, but that someone is using a fake passport with your data.
The above method of fraud is relatively rare; most often, criminals act according to the following schemes.
Registration of credits and loans
As an example, we have already given above the situation of how fraudsters can use a person’s passport data if they have an accomplice in the bank. Usually such an employee does not work for a long time in one financial organization. He applies for the desired position, enters into several fictitious deals and quits.
Depending on how much information the scammers have, they can apply for either a regular consumer loan or a mortgage loan using your property as collateral.
The criminals get the money, and you get the obligation to repay the debt. Theoretically, such a loan can be contested in court, but it will take time and the expensive help of a lawyer.
Business registration
Such passport scams have become especially popular after business registration mechanisms have been simplified. Now, to open your own company, you don’t even have to come to an appointment with officials. All registration actions are carried out through special services or with the help of notaries. Therefore, if you have someone else’s personal data, you can easily falsify documents for registering an individual entrepreneur or LLC.
Such companies are usually used for money laundering, and when law enforcement agencies begin to unravel the entire chain, they will first come to the person in whose name the business is registered.
Cheating in online games
Here is another option when you can use your passport data without a passport. Such fraud can both cause you financial harm and only affect your reputation. In the first case, using information about you, a criminal may try to gain access to your game account.
Most of these games rely on donations (money that players pay to receive various bonuses), and these funds are allowed to be transferred between players, as well as withdrawn from the system. Therefore, if you have a lot of paid game currency in your account, they may try to steal it. The second option is also very unpleasant: having gained access to the account, they turn it into a means for sending advertising spam. 
Internet fraud
Many electronic payment systems require you to provide your passport details to register in the system; and to remove the minimum restrictions on the volume of funds passed through, it is enough to send a photo of your passport. But what can you do with a photo of your passport data?
If hacked by criminals, such an account becomes an excellent platform for laundering funds and financing illegal organizations. So you risk ending up on the list of suspects in cases of arms or drug trafficking, and perhaps financing of terrorism. And in such a situation there is little pleasure, even for an innocent person.
You can give another example of what can be done on the Internet with someone else’s passport. After sending a copy of the documents to the payment system, you get the opportunity to receive loans directly online. And then the fraudster takes a loan, spends it on purchasing goods, or simply transfers the money to another electronic wallet.
Also online lending services are now popular, where you register using your passport and borrow from the project administration or other users. This service is in demand, because you can quickly get money, but the protection of such transactions is several times lower. Therefore, the borrower may well be a criminal with a photo of someone else’s passport.
And this is not all that scammers can do with a copy of your passport. Therefore, it is important to know about protection methods.
How to protect yourself from scammers
The personal data of every citizen of the Russian Federation is protected by a special federal law, and this is your best protection. You have every right to refuse to provide your passport data, and especially a copy of the document, if the party requiring it does not have the appropriate permission. According to the procedure, you must agree to the collection and processing of such information, and if nothing is explained to you and you are not asked to sign a written consent, then the data is being transferred illegally.
When it comes to the question of whether it is possible to give a copy of your passport to strangers, you are the master of your own destiny. No one prohibits such a transfer, but if your data is stolen by scammers, then the responsibility falls entirely on you. But if you gave a photocopy to an official employee and signed the permission, then the organization he represents is responsible for their safety.
Fraudsters found out your passport details - what to do
If scammers find out your passport details, then your protection is to contact law enforcement agencies or Roskomnadzor. The easiest way is to submit an application to the prosecutor's office, where they are required to initiate a case and identify those responsible for disclosing information. During the investigation, the prosecutor himself will contact Roskomnadzor so that they can take measures to remove information about you from open sources, if it gets there.
This publication does not address the issue of theft of the document itself.
Having found or stolen a passport, a fraudster can re-stick a photograph in it. As a result, a person can live for a long time under someone else’s name and surname. It is possible that the fraudster will try to break into the home of the real owner of the passport.
A fraudster can apply for a loan using a fake one. It’s more difficult to do this now, but criminals often deal with dishonest bank employees.
Using someone else’s passport or fraudsters can register a company and carry out dubious transactions through it. In addition, the passport holder is also appointed as the formal director of such a company. Then there is a threat of holding a person accountable for illegal actions committed by scammers.
Even with only a person’s passport details, a criminal can cause him trouble. For example, a fraudster enters into an agreement on behalf of another person and indicates his passport details in it. The counterparty, without checking the passport, signs all the papers. Further, having received money under this agreement, the fraudster soon disappears safely. As a result, the injured party begins to present its claims to the unsuspecting passport holder.
Using someone else's passport data, attackers can register ownership of any property, for example, a car. And if damage is caused by this car, the demands will also be addressed to the owner of the passport.
How to protect yourself from scammers
If a person or someone has been stolen, you should immediately write a statement to the police. At the same time, you must immediately begin processing a new passport.
If possible, a person should not give the passport or its copies to strangers, even for a few hours. If this happens, then you need to note for yourself when and to whom the passport or its data was given. If an unpleasant situation arises, it will be easier to get on the trail of the scammers.
If a person finds out that an enterprise is registered in his name or that he is its director, he must urgently contact tax office at your place of residence, as well as to the police. The fact is that registering an enterprise using someone else’s passport data is a criminal offense.
If fraudsters have issued a loan for a person, you need to obtain a copy of the loan agreement from the bank or collection company. After this, the victim must apply to the court with a claim to declare such an agreement invalid. During the consideration of the case, the question of ordering a handwriting examination should be raised before the court. This will reveal the fact of forgery of signatures on the loan agreement. The same should be done if criminals enter into other agreements.
The loss of a passport or even a leak of information about passport data can result in very unpleasant “surprises”. Starting from debt on a loan, which the victim had never even heard of, to unpleasant conversations with law enforcement officers about the activities of a shell company registered in the name of a citizen who has lost his passport.
More details about the problem
So, what are the most common manipulations with passport data? Fraudsters, having acquired them, can:- gain access to manage the victim’s bank or telephone cards;
- take out a large loan from a banking institution, sometimes at extortionate interest rates;
- engage in the re-registration of movable and immovable property;
- open a company or small enterprise and engage in very dubious matters;
- carry out certain transactions using duplicate papers that are issued to the holder of a specific passport;
- use data for various online games, which often require serious financial investments;
- take out microloans from various financial institutions (even several);
- commit other criminal offenses, hiding behind these passport data, i.e. essentially living another person's life.
Methods for obtaining passport data
Surprisingly, by scouring the Internet, you can find a lot of resources that offer to buy those same passport data, even for relatively small amounts. Why is this happening? Very often, potential victims themselves voluntarily give them up. By registering on all sorts of “very serious” dating sites, or taking part in some online competitions or sweepstakes, people automatically become a risk group.Another common way is the transfer of passport data of a specific person or persons by employees of banks, credit unions, call centers and similar structures.
For an employee of such institutions, upon dismissal, it will not be difficult to copy the data of his former clients onto some kind of media and then sell it to scammers. And the internal security service is not always able to prevent this, because such a technical operation is a matter of minutes.
People, especially those of retirement age, often hand themselves over to scammers. Ignoring information about personal security from serious banking institutions, they blurt out over the phone not only their card details, but also their passport details, which are supposedly necessary to receive financial assistance or clarify some very important information.
Children should carry out appropriate explanatory work with their elderly parents regarding the safety of personal passport data.
But, in essence, almost any citizen can become a victim of fraud with passport data.
Possible consequences
The most common consequences for the victim will be litigation with the bank from which he allegedly took out a loan. You will have to prove your non-involvement in this only through court. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the decision will be in favor of the victim.A “black” company can be registered for a person whose passport data is used. And then he can be brought not only to administrative, but even criminal liability as the main responsible person.
Even if you only have the first page of your passport, scammers can apply for small loans via the Internet, but at a very high interest rate. A person, most likely, will not find out about this right away, but after 2-3 months, when the percentage increases and collectors begin to “harass” him.
Among other, more “exotic” methods of fraud with other people’s passport data:
- “fake” marriage;
- attempts to become a “relative” in order to receive their share of the inheritance;
- attempts to travel abroad under a false name and surname, especially to those countries where you can enter using an internal passport.
What can you do with someone else’s passport (video)
What can be done with someone else’s passport data in modern conditions. Most effective methods to protect this data.How to protect yourself
Despite the fact that it is impossible to completely protect yourself from this type of fraud, there are a number of effective preventive measures:- It is better to make photocopies of your passport yourself or be present during this process. Make only the required number of copies.
- Unused passport photocopies cannot simply be thrown into the trash. They should be burned or first torn into small pieces.
- It is better to store the originals of important documents and, first of all, passports in some safe place where it is difficult for outsiders to penetrate.
- When applying for a loan on your own or concluding an agreement, you need to carefully monitor all the manipulations of the person in charge, write down his name, surname and position. If you have any suspicions, immediately notify internal security officials or police officers.
- If your passport has already been lost, you need to report it to the police IMMEDIATELY. Even if the police return your passport, it is better to change its details, since the likelihood that fraudsters have already used it is quite high.
- After restoring your passport, you can contact the bank to print out your credit history; it will be better to find out about troubles at their early stages.