What scammers can do with lost passports or passport data

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.

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.

What can scammers do with a copy of your passport?

It is not at all necessary for the fraudster to have the original passport; it is enough to have only a photocopy. You can also take possession of the data in any other way, which is not a difficult enough task. Please note that scammers can use the information received immediately, or they can wait for some time. In any case, this may result in material damage for the owner of the document.

Of course, there may be different conditions for committing a crime, but if the circumstances are favorable for the criminal, then he will be able to:

1. Get a loan from a bank.
2. Re-register real estate.
3. Manage bank cards.
4. Register the company.
5. Issue debt obligations.
6. Obtain a legitimate duplicate of a document, which will later allow him to carry out fraudulent activities.
7. Perform any actions on the Internet on behalf of the owner of the document.

The main situations are listed here, but the imagination of scammers is constantly evolving, so sophisticated ways of using personal information cannot be ruled out. In any case, fraud with a citizen’s personal data is aimed at a person’s lack of vigilance, careless handling of a passport, trust and inattention.

Is it possible to find out the series and number of a passport online?

A citizen’s passport, namely his number, is an important element in his life, because almost all registration takes place precisely on the basis that he has his own code. When registering an apartment or a bank card, the user will need to enter his passport number.

If someone is able to take possession of this data, it is difficult to imagine what will really happen to the owner of the passport in the future. However, the unique number cannot be stored anywhere other than the user’s passport, that is, in the source code.

There are sites that offer to find out the number by paying 100 rubles in advance. These are scammers.

However, you can try to find out the first four digits. To do this you need to do the following:

1. Open the OSAKO number where the user received the passport;
2. Remember in what year the user received the certificate.

After this, the user will receive 2 digits, which he may need in the future.

It is possible that the user needs to verify the authenticity of his own document. To do this, you can go to the official authentication website, enter your own series and document number. The site will provide detailed information to the user.

Where can I get data or a copy of my passport?

According to the current Federal Law “On Personal Data” dated July 27, 2006 N152-FZ, each authorized representative of an organization who has access to personal information is required to enter into an agreement with the counterparty on its protection and consent to processing. If there is no agreement, then you are faced with scammers.

Theft of bank customer information

When drawing up a loan or deposit agreement, you need to carefully read its contents. Bankers often reserve the right to transfer confidential information about clients to third parties. This is exactly where scammers can play.

In 2021, an investigation into the leak of confidential data about clients of three banking institutions received wide publicity (according to media reports, the data of 900 thousand individuals was freely available). The head of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunyan, does not deny that the leaks are associated with both external penetration into the system and unlawful actions of employees of institutions.

Through unscrupulous personnel department employees

Another way to obtain personal data is through a careless personnel officer. Not all enterprise managers are yet aware of the responsibility for the leakage of confidential information. Most often, HR department inspectors use unaccounted for flash drives, on which they can carry any information of interest to fraudsters.

other methods

Unfortunately, if you enter a request to purchase personal data in any browser, many links will appear in the results. On the Internet, if desired , for a fee, you can access databases of clients of insurance institutions, large financial organizations, online stores and cellular operators.

What can scammers do?

Having a copy of your passport or personal information, you can get a microloan, open a company, buy a SIM card for subsequent scams, or make illegal transactions via the Internet.

Applying for a loan

By law, to obtain a loan, the borrower must be present in person and have an original passport. However, in judicial practice there are many cases where criminals circumvented these requirements by entering into a conspiracy with bank employees. Most often, such a scheme is used in microfinance organizations.

In addition, there are now many companies that issue microloans via the Internet: you need to register on the website, provide information about yourself, including passport details. To confirm the operation, the fraudster only needs to enter a control SMS from his phone for the transfer to a bank account - and the money goes to his bank account or e-wallet, and a completely different person is listed as the debtor.

There are also cases when, having taken possession of someone else’s passport data, criminals sign their owner up as guarantors for a loan. According to the loan agreement, he will be jointly and severally liable to the bank.

Big trouble

The Central Bank said that the issuance of a loan by third parties using someone else’s passport is a rare case. “However, it should be remembered that a citizen’s personal data, including passport data, is recorded in a variety of places, from hotels to online ticket purchasing services. In modern conditions, it is almost impossible to completely eliminate the provision of your personal data to third parties, but it is recommended to minimize risks by not posting documents publicly on social networks, not sending copies of them by email, not leaving your passport as collateral, etc.,” they warned. at the Bank of Russia.

It is on the Internet that the greatest risks lie, experts in the field of information security confirm. According to Andrey Kostin, senior content analyst at Kaspersky Lab, the main danger is online fraud.

“For example, you supposedly won a prize, but to receive it you need to confirm your age (your identity) and send the scammers your passport details,” Kostin explained.

Pseudo-employers can also lead you into a trap. There are unscrupulous job search services where you will be asked to send a scan of your passport. After this, nothing happens, the scammers get the data, and your song is done. A passport is also asked for when registering at online casinos, as well as on some dating sites. “Such services should not be trusted, because a data leak can happen at any time,” Kostin warned.

Fraudsters have learned to hook victims using phishing. Criminals create a copy of some government service and wait for the desired foreign data to appear there. Then, together, criminals can get an INN, passport, and SNILS.

Another big danger is the black market where passport data is sold. “And at one point the victim finds out that, for example, he is the owner of a problem company or the holder of a large loan. Unscrupulous agents can also use the data to transfer the funded part of the pension to a non-state pension fund. Using passport data, fraudsters can also carry out various frauds on the Internet, produce a fake passport, and so on,” said Kostin

Confrontation

At the same time, passport data itself, contrary to popular belief, is of less interest to criminals - it is too difficult to monetize, Dmitry Kuznetsov, director of Positive Technologies for methodology and standardization, told Gazeta.Ru. Another thing is copies of passport pages.

“During checks by regulators, the bank must somehow confirm the operation; this is why a copy of the passport is made. The bank employee creates a package of documents related to this operation, which includes a copy of the passport. That is, the copy itself, and not the data in it, confirms that the client performed the operation personally and presented his passport,” he explained.

Indeed, if the employee is an accomplice, then it won’t cost a fraudster anything to commit a crime with a scan of someone else’s passport. “The only difficulty is the client's signature, but criminologists estimate that 87% of people's signatures are too simple to detect a forgery in a document that does not contain other handwritten inscriptions. In this case, it is difficult for the injured client to challenge such an operation,” said Kuznetsov.

Without collusion, applying for a loan at a branch is a tough nut to crack for scammers.

Bad plans are most often thwarted by a thorough check of the borrower. Reliable banks do not issue loans online, even if preliminary verification and approval can take place remotely; a face-to-face meeting through a courier or in a branch cannot be avoided. “In any case, if a person is promised a solid loan online with minimal documents, he needs to be wary, since there are high risks of stumbling upon scammers,” says Sergei Nikitin, deputy head of the Group-IB computer forensics laboratory.

Is it possible to get a loan using a photocopy of a passport?

Obtaining a loan using someone else's passport or photocopy is one of the most common types of fraud that can be done if you have a photocopy on hand. However, to carry out such a crime it is necessary to have connections within the bank itself. Most often, it is enough to simply enter into an agreement with a bank employee who will turn a blind eye to the fact that a person, when receiving a loan, provides a document that is not his own. It will then be difficult for the owner to prove his non-involvement, and he will have to prove it during legal proceedings with the bank.

Speaking about what scammers can do with a copy of a passport, it is worth paying attention to the fact that today there are companies that can provide a loan to their client online. To apply for a loan, just a copy of the document is enough.

Take a microloan

The scheme, according to which one person applies for a loan using the passport of another, has been established for a long time, says Yulia Kombarova, general director of the St. Petersburg “Legal Bureau No. 1”. Fraudsters rarely lend money from banks, where the potential borrower is thoroughly checked by the security service. If this happens, there is a 99% chance that the scammers have accomplices in the bank.

Basically, loans using a photocopy of someone else’s passport are issued via the Internet or in the office of microfinance organizations (which also does not exclude collusion between scammers and MFO employees).

“Having a copy of your passport, it’s easy to forge a loan agreement; just fill out a form and “draw” the borrower’s signature. The authenticity of the signature is not verified. Taking a photograph of the person requesting a loan makes fraud more difficult, but this is not always done,” says Kombarova.

Usually, using one photocopy of a passport, scammers apply for many loans for small amounts - from 2 to 5 thousand rubles. Such amounts do not attract the attention of the creditor’s security officers, and a conscientious debtor may suddenly discover that he is “hanging” with several small debts.

“Thus, our client-entrepreneur “borrowed” 3.5 thousand rubles from a microfinance office. The MFO then sold the debt to collectors. The amount was small, but due to late payments, the man’s credit history was damaged, and banks stopped approving loans for him. He had to sue the microfinance organization because they did not communicate. As a result, after a year and a half, his credit history was cleared, and compensation for damage was recovered from the microfinance organization,” says the expert.

If you suddenly find out that you are saddled with someone else’s debts, you should change your passport to stop the emergence of new loans. You should also send a pre-trial claim to the creditor. If the fraudsters acted through the bank, then there is a high probability of an agreement: the bank will voluntarily write off the loan and then remove the discrediting information from the credit history, says Kombarova. In the case of an MFO, it is more complicated - most likely, they will claim that it was the borrower who received the loan.

“If the creditor disputes his mistake, then there are two options left, and both are unpleasant - to sue or leave everything as it is. The first option is preferable - the trial lasts from six months, and the costs for a lawyer start from 20 thousand rubles. A handwriting examination will prove that another person signed for you; another piece of evidence will be a video recording of a swindler sitting in the bank instead of you. When the court recognizes the agreement as invalid, the note about the loan in the history is removed, and the victim can count on compensation for moral damage,” explains Kombarova.

But if you leave everything as it is, then you have to wait for the creditor to file a lawsuit and defend your position in court. The problem is that the debtor may miss the claim, and the court, in his absence, will accept all claims from the creditor, the expert emphasizes. In any case, the credit history will be damaged, since the bad credit will remain in it.

Register a SIM card

Since last year, Russia has tightened the rules for the sale of SIM cards. From now on, the subscriber must provide the operator with personal information (show a passport), and the operator must verify their authenticity. SIM cards purchased, for example, in an underground passage without an ID card are blocked by the operator.

There are people who need a mobile number that will not be blocked by the operator and that is not registered to them. These are scammers. Some pretend to be witch doctors and extort money from pensioners, others call gullible citizens and extract personal bank card information from them.

And since today you can register a SIM card via the Internet, scammers can easily do this using copies of other people’s passports.

Sell ​​an apartment

It happens that with the help of some copy of a passport, swindlers... steal apartments. Last year, Muscovite Dmitry P . The man was renting out an apartment - he signed an agreement, everything was as it should be. At the same time, I made a copy of my passport, which I gave to the tenant.nThe tenant did not live in the rented accommodation for long. Using a scan of the apartment owner’s passport, he issued a power of attorney from a notary and promptly sold it at a bargain price.

Opening a company

When registering any enterprise, providing passport data is mandatory. By providing a copy of someone else’s passport, you can, with some degree of probability, register a company in the name of a person who does not suspect anything at all. Then you can do whatever you want with the company, because all the problems with the tax authorities will fall on the shoulders of the person who was simply deceived. In essence, he will become the owner of a shell business. Namely a front one, because there is no point in opening a company in the name of a third party just like that. Such companies are always used to carry out fraudulent activities. Naturally, sooner or later the company will be closed, and an investigation will be carried out against its management. The person for whom it was registered (the victim) will suffer first. This is what the use of passport data by fraudsters can lead to, but that’s not all.

Other options

Also in judicial practice there are quite a lot of cases of fraudulent re-registration of real estate or cars. In this case, regular copies of documents are also used.

In some cases, owners are unable to return their property at all or prove that they did not take out a bank loan. This may require years of trial, and it is not a fact that the court will acquit the victim. Most likely, the scammers themselves will not be found.

Now you understand what types of fraud there are with copies of passports. Of course, implementing the methods described above is quite difficult, but not impossible. If the fraudster has connections in the bank, he will be able to enter into a share with an employee of this same bank and share a loan, which he will approve. This is what scammers can do with a copy of a passport, but every year other ways of using passport data are being invented.

Your photos can also be used against you

Sometimes we ourselves willingly share our confidential data - all that remains is to take it and use it. There have been so many cases when lucky people flying on vacation posted their boarding passes on social networks, and then greatly regretted it. No wonder: knowing your last name and ticket number, you can get into your own account. And, for example, canceling registration or a flight - well, out of spite. It is much worse if, when entering this data, the airline gives full access to the account, where phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers and bonus cards are indicated.

What can scammers do if they find out your passport details?

Messages may look like this: “We issue loans up to 2,000,000 rubles from 10 to 15% per annum.” Do not send scans of all completed pages. Companies often indicate that it is necessary to send copies of all completed passport pages. For most verifications, one or two pages is usually sufficient. Do not submit high resolution scans. Many people believe that if they ask you to send a scanned copy of your passport, it must be of high resolution so that almost the structure of the paper is visible. But often just a photo of the document is enough.

How to protect your data from being used?

First of all, cultivate a culture of safe handling of sites and organizations. To get started, try to follow these three simple tips.

• When registering in an online store, it is not at all necessary to share your real first and last name - no one will check them.
• Also try not to keep scans and photocopies of personal documents in the public domain (for example, in cloud storage).
• Set a password or other identification method on your smartphone. An unprotected smartphone is simply a treasure trove of information useful to criminals.

“We treat data too frivolously, presenting it anywhere upon request,” says T.A. Kutsenko, a lawyer at the Law Office. The global community strives to inform people as clearly as possible about why data is collected from them, describe who will use it and how, and limit its processing to the purposes stated during collection. For example, such provisions are provided for by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into force in May 2021 in the European Union.”

What to do if a bank loan was taken out in your name

Often, scammers take out loans using another person’s passport. about the debt from notifications or calls from collectors or employees of a credit institution. In this case, there are two ways out of the situation: accept it and start paying, or file a complaint with one of the authorized organizations.

Where to contact?

• Law enforcement agencies;
• Roskomnadzor;
• Prosecutor's office

Employees of these organizations are required to accept a citizen’s application and conduct an investigation to identify leaks of confidential data. If the result is positive, the guilty person will be punished and the debt will be cancelled.

Responsibility for the use of personal data for fraudulent purposes

There is criminal and administrative liability for the use of other people's personal data. The punishment depends on a number of factors. Issued in court.

According to Article 13.11 of the Administrative Code, administrative liability is applied in case of violation of the procedure for processing, using and collecting data.

Punishable by a fine in the amount of:

• 300-500 rub. for individuals;
• 500-1000 rub. - officials;
• 5000-10,000 – legal entities

The rights of citizens are protected by the Law “On the Protection of Personal Data”. This document sets out the basic rules for the use and transfer of confidential information.

Criminal liability is provided for in three articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation:

• 137 – public display of personal information, violation of the boundaries of personal life. Punishable by a fine of up to 200 thousand rubles, imprisonment for up to 2 years. Officials face a fine of 100 thousand rubles or a prison term of up to 4 years;
• 140 – provision by an official of knowingly false information to the owner of documents, resulting in harm. Threatens a fine of up to 200,000 rubles, imprisonment for up to 18 months, removal from office and a ban on engaging in specific activities for 2-5 years;
• 272 – unauthorized access and use of confidential information. An individual faces imprisonment for up to 2 years and a fine of up to 200 thousand rubles. For an official – up to 5 years and a fine of 100 thousand rubles

Decisions on criminal punishment are made extremely rarely, due to the problematic nature of investigations. As a rule, the culprits pay only small fines.

Features of the Russian passport system

The passport system of the Russian Federation involves issuing a certificate taking into account the following rules:

The state document provides space for making notes about whether the citizen served in military service, where he is registered, whether he has children, a spouse, and other documents to confirm his identity. If desired, you can also enter your blood group with the Rh factor. Making entries in the certificate that are not provided for by markings on the pages of the document is prohibited. According to the Regulations on the Passport of a Citizen of the Russian Federation, the document is issued for a period determined by the following ages:

• from 14 to 20 years old;
• from 20 to 45 years;
• from 45 years to the time of death.

That is, a citizen changes his passport twice in his life: at 20 and 45 years old. If a citizen for any reason violates the points provided for by the Regulations on the Passport of the Russian Federation, according to the law he is responsible for this. Many people wonder whether it is possible to disclose the series and number of the passport to anyone. Information about this data can only be provided at the request of official organizations, since it is possible that these numbers can be used by fraudsters for their own purposes.