The German government could personally hand over money from the anti-crisis fund to criminals.
It is reported by Deutsche Welle.
There is a business assistance program in Germany today. In particular, enterprises with up to five employees were entitled to a one-time payment of 9 thousand euros. If the number of employees reaches 15, then the assistance is 15 thousand euros.
According to media reports, last week unknown scammers made an exact copy of the official website of the Ministry of Economy of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is noteworthy that the real web page of the department was blocked in the meantime due to a recorded phishing attempt – to gain unauthorized access to confidential user data.
There was only one difference between a fake and an official site: its creators posted profiles on a fake page. As conceived by the scammers, the questionnaires should have been filled out by state support applicants amid the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, fraudsters intended to use the data of real entrepreneurs to submit requests for assistance to the ministry, but with third-party bank accounts.
As it turned out, the server hosting the fake site is located in the United States. At the same time, the scammers themselves could not be calculated, since they are hiding the anonymization service in Panama.