An 86-year-old man from the Dniprovskyi district of Kyiv received a call from a "SBU officer." He was told that he was suspected of state treason and financing the aggressor country, so he had to urgently transfer all his savings "for declaration and verification." The pensioner handwrote a statement on voluntary transfer of funds and gave a stranger 63,300 dollars and 48,120 euros — equivalent to several million hryvnias.
This is just one of three incidents reported by the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office. The total amount is over 8 million hryvnias, with three victims: men aged 86 and 77, and a woman aged 70.
How the scheme works
In all three cases, the scenario is identical: a call with a fabricated accusation → psychological pressure → a "search" or "interrogation" via video call → a courier collects the cash. In the Solomianskyi district, a 77-year-old man was subjected to a "search" via video call, after which he transferred over 13,000 dollars, 29,000 euros, and 60,000 hryvnias. A 70-year-old woman transferred 14,000 dollars and 144,000 hryvnias through a courier.
"The suspect, after exchanging currency, transferred the obtained savings to cryptocurrency accounts of persons unknown to him."
Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office
This is where the scheme takes on an industrial character: couriers are just one link. The money is immediately converted to cryptocurrency through exchanges, making it extremely difficult to trace its route. The couriers in this case turned out to be two Kyiv residents — aged 23 and 31. Both are suspected of complicity in fraud, but the organizers of the scheme have not yet been identified.
Not an exception, but a trend
According to Ekonomichna Pravda, in 2025 the number of cashless fraud operations in Ukraine increased by 12-18% — to 310-340 thousand incidents, with losses reaching 1.4-1.6 billion hryvnias. Meanwhile, 80% of crimes in the financial sector are manipulations of consciousness, not technical account breaches.
The publication Expres.online draws attention to a detail that law enforcement has not yet officially confirmed: typically, victims of such schemes are wealthy pensioners who previously ordered biologically active additives online — their contact information from databases apparently fell into the hands of scammers. In other words, people are not chosen at random.
The scheme has already spread beyond "typical" victims: in May 2026, pseudo-SBU employees used a similar scenario to extort about 7 million hryvnias from former Prime Minister of Ukraine Valerii Pustovoitenko — a 79-year-old man with experience working in state bodies.
Why the fear of "treason" works
The word "treason" in the context of war is not an abstract threat. For someone who remembers Soviet repression or simply follows the news, an accusation of financing the aggressor sounds like a real danger of imprisonment. Scammers know this and use the military context as a psychological lever — just as they once used "blocked card" or "suspicious transfer."
The Cyber Police neutralized 23 organized fraud groups in the first eight months of 2024 — six more than in the corresponding period of the previous year. However, the number of appeals from citizens has not decreased: schemes are reproduced faster than they can be solved.
In this case, two couriers have been identified. The organizers — no. If the investigation does not reach those who compile victim databases and receive cryptocurrency on the exit, the next call from "SBU" will ring for someone else this week.
