1800 Scheme: a new scam through the WhatsApp platform
January 10, 2025
Be very cautious if one of your contacts on WhatsApp (or from other messaging platforms) sends you a message asking for money. It could be a scam, nicknamed the “1800 Scheme”.
How does it work?
Attackers manage to gain unauthorized access to various WhatsApp accounts and then send messages to the compromised accounts’ Contact List, impersonating the account holder. Through these messages, the criminals request a short-term loan. The amount initially requested by the attackers was 1800 lei, which is why the method was named “1800 Scheme”.
The fraud scheme is based on the fact that the messages come from known people (friends, relatives, acquaintances), who in reality have been impersonated, so that victims are tempted to transfer the requested amount without doing any additional checks. If the victim responds positively to the loan request, the attackers immediately claim that their account is blocked and send a Revolut account/card owned by another beneficiary for payment. This could be a red flag, but unfortunately it can be easily ignored by victims due to a false sense of trust, given precisely by the fact that the discussion is with a close person.
After transferring the money without checking, the victim is asked for money again on the grounds that the person in need miscalculated the necessary amount.
Recommendations for your protection:
- Before initiating a money transfer, always check directly with the person who requested the money, through another communication channel (call them, but not through the same communication platform), to confirm if the request really comes from them.
- Secure your own WhatsApp accounts or any other online communication platform as good as possible, following the security recommendations of the respective platforms and those of the Romanian Authorities (such as the National Directorate of Cyber Security: https://dnsc.ro).
- Be careful at phishing and scam attempts: do not answer unknown phone calls or messages, do not open links or files received from unknown sources.
- Use protection tools available on the market that detect and alert you when you receive unsafe content via email, SMS and platform messages you use.
- Be very cautious with messages that ask you to act immediately or make urgent payments, that contain grammatical or phrasing errors (automatic translations), or those who promote prizes or offers that are too good to be true.
If you have been a victim of a fraud scheme, we encourage you to notify the Police as soon as possible, as well as the National Directorate of Cyber Security – DNSC (phone: 1911; email: alertsdnsc.ro).
