The scammers have already used multiple schemes to take advantage of Russia’s new digital rubles, well ahead of the full-scale implementation, scheduled to begin in September next year.
According to stakeholders cited by the Russian media, it will take another year or two to develop a working mechanism for banks to return stolen digital cash to their owners.
Criminals steal money using digital rubles as bait
Scammers are usually using new financial systems and technologies very quickly, with Russia’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) being no exception.
As soon as wider adoption begins, Crooks will employ social engineering, interface forgery and user interaction, according to Vladimir Chernov, an analyst at Freedom Finance Global Brokerage.
Speaking to the Russian daily Izvestia, he explained in detail.
“The main focus is not on technology hacking, but suggests transfers to “safe accounts,” for example, bank employees, false claims, psychological pressures allegedly made by links. ”
The digital ruble is still being tested, but bad actors have already adopted several schemes in the new format of the National Fiat. Meri Valishvili is Meri Valishvili, an associate professor in the Public and City Finance Bureau of Perekhanov Russian University of Economics.
Scammers are currently offering potential victims, for example, potential victims to convert regular money into digital currency, while the digital ruble has not yet entered the mass circulation.
They are also trying to convince citizens that it is essential to transfer savings from their bank accounts to digital ruble wallets. Others try to make them believe they need fake digital tokens to pay.
Another scheme includes calls from criminals presenting themselves as employees of Federal Tax Services (FNS) and notifies victims of tax evasion penalties that must be paid only in the digital ruble, independent expert Andrey Barkhota added.
Russian bank to recover digital rubles transferred to fraudsters
At the same time, he said that trading with Russia’s CBDC will be much easier to control.
The experts interviewed by Izvestia agree. The design of the digital ruble as a platform fully controlled by the state will allow for permanent recording of all transactions and easy identification of fraud-related flows, explained Vladimir Chernov.
Aksakov also stressed that Russian banks need to compensate their clients for damages caused by fraudsters. They are responsible for returning digital cash to the owner when the coin is transferred to an account blacklisted by the Russian Central Bank (CBR).
Tracking the digital ruble transfer should not be difficult, but retrieving money from recipients will still be a difficult task, according to Alexei Il Katsky, an information security consultant at Moscow-based cybersecurity company Positive Technology.
Victims will have to wait several months, if not years, to seek a court decision. At the same time, Chernov hopes that the mechanism that allows banks to recover digital rubles already sent to fraudsters is likely to be implemented the earliest time between 2027 and 2028.
According to CBR, the fraudster stole 6.3 billion rubles (nearly $75 million) from the Russians in the second quarter of this year. The new laws introduced to combat such crimes have been criticized for making up for crypto use and domestic transactions.
The trial with the digital ruble with a limited number of participants began in 2023. The first planned full release of CBDC in 2025, with approval from the state duma, will be recently rescheduled in the next fall and will take place in stages starting September 1, 2026.
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