129 Individuals Affected by Criminal Group's Activities: Details

The Investigative Committee of Armenia has completed the preliminary investigation into a criminal case concerning the fraud that resulted in the theft of around 140 million AMD from 129 victims, focusing on one suspect.

As a result of extensive investigative and procedural actions conducted during the pre-trial proceedings, significant details have come to light, including the mechanisms of the fraud, the scope of the victims, and the extent of the damage caused.

The investigation has established that a 32-year-old man, from July 2019 to April 2021, fraudulently stole a particularly large sum from various individuals with the unified intent, alongside 9 other identified individuals and several others whose identities remain unknown. Initially, through his own credit company, and later through 19 different offices posing as credit organizations, registered without state registration, he targeted online advertisements on Facebook.com offering favorable loan conditions.

Based on these advertisements, citizens who expressed interest in obtaining loans were invited to offices rented at different addresses in Yerevan, where they were falsely presented with opportunities to secure loans from various banks and credit organizations at low-interest rates in exchange for a commission fee. Subsequently, the clients were accompanied to different banks and commercial organizations, where the fraudsters abused the trust placed in them by taking the loan amounts, products, or receipts issued for those products, fraudulently claiming that further payments were necessary to finalize the transactions, only to abscond with the funds without providing any promised monetary returns.

The investigation also revealed that the 32-year-old man and other group members used additional fraudulent methods during their criminal activities. They obtained personal data from the citizens who approached them and registered accounts in payment systems in their names, through which they fraudulently obtained loan amounts online from one of the credit companies, embezzling the funds without releasing them to the victims. Furthermore, they escorted individuals to various branches of a bank in Armenia, deceitfully acquiring access data for the Mobile Banking service opened in the victims' names, allowing them to obtain online loans, which were also never provided to the clients.

It has been established that 129 individuals suffered from the activities of this criminal group, losing a total of 140,246,430 AMD. Based on the collected sufficient evidence, the 32-year-old man has been charged under the first part of Article 178 of the RA Criminal Code, and he has been remanded in custody. The case has been separated for distinct proceedings, and the investigation has been declared completed, with the case submitted to the prosecutor in charge of the proceedings for approval of the indictment and referral to the court.