- Sona Martirosyan
- Yerevan
Scam with neural networks
Internet scammers have robbed gullible citizens of Armenia of half a million dollars with AI neural networks to create promotional videos in which famous people urge investing in various commercial projects and profit-sharing schemes.
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“What I did is just stupid. I’m ashamed to talk about it because I was always sure I was an educated, informed person. A person of my type cannot fall victim to such a cheap deception. But it happened,” says 38-year-old Anush K.
She teaches social studies at a high school in Tavush province and fears that her students will stop trusting her if they learn about the incident:
“I also teach media literacy as part of the social studies subject. Can you imagine how ridiculous it is that a person who talks about safe behavior on the internet every day, gives their money to scammers?”
Anush, like thousands of other residents of Armenia, was the victim of an internet scam that was distributed on behalf of Gazprom Armenia.
According to the Armenian Investigative Committee, the victims have already “invested” half a million dollars in the non-existent financial system.
“With the help of neural networks, scammers created advertisements in which well-known figures – politicians and businessmen – call for investing in various projects or purchasing shares of various companies, including Gazprom Armenia CJSC.” The victims are mostly people who are not familiar with technology and agree to provide their bank details,” the Investigative Committee said.
Anush was “persuaded” to invest by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whose image was also used by the scammers.
“I knew that modern information technologies make it possible to duplicate the appearance and voice of any person. But I thought it was impossible to create such a video that would not differ at all from the real one. In the video I saw, Pashinyan’s voice, facial expressions and speech were absolutely real. It was my mistake to believe what I saw.”
Here is one such video that has been circulating on Facebook
After watching the video, Anush clicked on the link provided in the video description. A page appeared on her phone screen, asking her to enter her name, surname and phone number.
She says that if the first link had asked for bank details, she would have had doubts. Immediately after entering her personal details, she received a call via the WhatsApp app. A man named Andrei explained the details of the transaction in Russian. Anush says the young man’s words did not inspire confidence, she disconnected the call and did not respond to subsequent ones.
“It seemed suspicious to me that the call was from abroad, that the guy spoke Russian. I thought it wasn’t worth making a dubious deal. But a few hours later, the call came from an Armenian number. A young woman spoke to me in Armenian. She said that the program allowed me to invest starting from $300, after which I would get a significant profit.
She explained that specialists, who understand securities, instead of us, send our money to buy such shares, which in a few days are sold two or three times more expensive. Allegedly, that’s how the profits are generated. I agreed, but decided to take my time. Over the next two days, this woman kept calling and asking why I hadn’t invested the money. During the last conversation, she said that the stock market was changing from day to day and that it was impossible to delay.”
Following instructions, Anush posted her bank details on the website and received a notification that the money had been transferred from her card. A few days later, the phone numbers from which she was contacted – both Armenian and foreign – were unavailable.
“Then we had to go to the bank, block this card and related accounts, get a new card. I realized that they already had all the data of this account, and any amount appearing on this card would immediately go to them.”
Her husband also insisted that she go to the police. The application was accepted, but she was warned that such cybercrimes are difficult to solve. Fraud groups operate from different countries using secure communications, so it is not easy to detect them or track their movements.
The success of scammers lies in carefully thought-out advertising, says information security expert Samvel Martirosyan:
“They shoot high-quality videos using the faces of famous people. Then they distribute them using advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Many people say that all their pages should be blocked and they should not be allowed to create new ones. But this is impossible. After all, ads are placed through constantly changing and even hacked pages. Vigilance is essential.”
There are signs of deception that should alert people, the expert said. For example, when strangers suggest investing a small amount, but get a big profit. According to Martirosyan, before investing money, it is necessary to study a particular market, to understand what interest rates are offered here. Scammers usually offer much higher percentages.
“A normal business offers 10-20 percent annual return on investment. And when it comes to investing with getting 20, 30, 40 or more percent per week, believe me you are being scammed. Especially when the offer comes from a stranger.”
As soon as a person invests an amount of money, he immediately finds himself “in the crosshairs of fraudsters”. They start working with him individually, using methods of psychological influence. Often those who made the first deposit are actually transferred a certain amount of money so that they tell others about it and attract more people.
“When someone receives a money transfer, they say, ‘If you tell your friends and acquaintances, you will get money for this. And when they get a certain number of people, they take all the money and disappear. But since they are not simple swindlers, they start calling the person again, demanding to invest the amount again, saying that the previous deposit is frozen.
After a certain period of time this person can even see his name and surname on some pages indicating the amount. And he thinks it is his money, but it is not. These are just drawn figures on which they are trying to build new frauds,” says Martirosyan.
And when the “victim” already intends to apply to law enforcement agencies, it even comes to threats.
According to the expert, scammers do not stop there. At the next stage, when a person realizes that all these steps are useless, they start calling him again with an offer of help. Some people present themselves, for example, as representatives of a large Swiss company, but are in fact from the same group demanding a fee for their services.
The mass involvement of Armenian residents in this manipulative process is due to several circumstances, psychologist Hayk Baghdian believes. Among them are the high threshold of social insecurity, as well as psychological traumas resulting from the tragic events of recent years. The psychologist says that wars make people especially vulnerable and Armenia is no exception:
“First of all, a person with psychological trauma starts to be told what he can achieve with the help of this money. For example, they say that you will get rich, you will have the house of your dreams, you will provide everything you need for your family. They create in his perception a certain desired future, what he dreams of. The impact of this technique increases when a person has a feeling of emptiness and needlessness, when the present does not satisfy him. And he begins to think that if he accepts this offer, life will become full.”
Regarding videos distributed by fraudsters and their impact, Bagdyan emphasizes that any advertisement contains elements of manipulation. And advertisements created for this purpose are usually well thought out and have maximum impact on the subconsciousness of a person. That is why it is very difficult to refuse this temptation, and it requires attention and vigilance.