“Al-Matar” TV channel Released Out on June 21, the investigative film “Hunt for Coffins” is about how relatives of Russian soldiers who disappeared in the war were deceived. The film’s author, journalist Ekaterina Fomina, with the help of a non-existent husband named Nikolai Fomin, catches the fraudsters with “live bait.” She posted in groups searching for missing persons a photo of her “husband”, taken using artificial intelligence from dozens of photographs of Russians who had already disappeared in the war.
Only 15 minutes after Fomina wrote about her missing “husband” in all known conversations to search for missing military personnel, she was informed that he was in captivity. Scammers posing as Ukrainian blogger Dmitry Karpenko tried to contact her immediately. He issued interviews with Russians captured in Ukraine (the real Karpenko did not contact the journalist).
The criminals suggested to Fomina to download the infected file in order to communicate. After downloading, the malware intercepts all incoming SMS messages, including banking notifications, and sends messages to the victim’s address book.
In another case, a fraudster contacted Fomina and offered to find a husband in exchange for money that would go “to the fighters for all kinds of needs.” “Some people, like me, find their loved one alive, but without translation [денег] “They promise to reset it to zero,” Fumina said.
She published correspondence with the “fighters” who first sent a disappearing photo with the question “Your photo?”, and then, when the journalist wrote that she did not have time to look, they told her: “So it is not your photo. We will reset this photo as anonymous. Next time you will be more careful.” One victim of scammers who has encountered such a scheme said: “They like to write: ‘Is money more important to you or saving your person?’”
In another case, a resident of Dagestan, Inga (Indira) Musaeva, contacted Fomina and said that she had helped find a missing person in 2024. According to her, she had “relations with the generals,” as well as “700 women and 300 fighters working in all fields.” As Dozd’s journalist proved, Musaeva had previously been tried for fraud.
Many scammers have contacted Fumina. In one case, she was told to contact a military lawyer, and in another, a tarot reader who searches for people “by cards, by coffee, by photographs,” and also performs a “love spell to return.”
“When I started looking for my wife, there were many people who wanted to help,” Fumina said at the end of the report. – Here’s a message again, they promise to find my Kolya and even add it to the exchange lists. The asking price is 24 thousand rubles. “The main thing is to believe in the best,” another scammer wrote to me.