Scammers pretend to be investment brokers or bank employees and offer to make particularly great-value investments in shares, bonds, cryptocurrencies or elsewhere. They ask you to install a programme (like Anydesk, among others) in order to make investments, or simply ask you to transfer money to their account. These scammers often create websites where the victim can track their “growing profits,” as false success encourages the victims to invest more and more.
So far, all cases of investment scams follow the pattern of the victim receiving a phone call notifying them of the “opportunity of the century” to invest and make a profit. The person offering the investment usually speaks Russian, although more have been speaking Latvian lately. The phone numbers they contact are chosen at random, or taken from an illegally-sourced database. The victims of these scams are often older people, and often people take out payday loans or even try to take out bank loans for the investment opportunity.