Stanislav Kuznetsov at SPIEF-2025 about the war against telephone scammers: 295 billion rubles stolen, 300 billion saved

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a report by Sberbank Deputy Board Chairman Stanislav Kuznetsov became the key note of the session “Telephone scammers: how longer can we stand it? A frank conversation with Olga Skabeeva”. The report not only revealed the size of the problem, but also gave a professional, technologically verified diagnosis: scammers are waging a massive campaign against citizens, but the counter-offensive tools are in place to be urgently and systematically applied by the state and banks. 

Stanislav Kuznetsov emphasized that there are about 200 different telephone fraud schemes operating in Russia today, all of them boiling down to one and the same basic strategy: to generate stress in the victims and offer them “magic salvation.” Fraudsters call on behalf of banks, law enforcement agencies, relatives, social services. The goal is to rattle a person and make him/her act impulsively. 

People receive millions of calls every day. March 2024 alone saw up to 20 million calls per day, and those are registered cases only, Stanislav Kuznetsov noted. The damage from cyber fraud in 2024 is estimated at 295 billion rubles to presumably reach a record 340 billion rubles by the end of 2025. 

The expert cited the shocking arithmetic of deception. Out of 100% of calls:

30% of citizens do not pick up the phone - this is not enough, he noted.

The remaining 70% of subscribers enter into conversation.

40% of them begin to guess that they are talking with scammers.

30 people continue the conversation, and 5-6 people begin to trust the scammers.

As a result, one person out of 100 becomes a victim and transfers money. 

Stanislav Kuznetsov also spoke about the results of the bank's efforts to protect clients. Last year alone, Sber “rescued” over 300 billion rubles that had already been transferred to fraudsters. The transactions were stopped and the funds were returned to their rightful owners.

Mechanisms for protecting against fraudulent activities are based on:

· analyzing client behavior patterns,

· responding to suspicious transactions in real time,

· internal anti-fraud systems and cooperative work with law enforcement agencies. 

The scope of Stanislav Kuznetsov's report went beyond current statistics: he outlined upcoming challenges. Fraudsters can easily falsify a voice and victims begin to hear who they think are their relatives. Deepfake videos and faces are the next stage in the evolution of fraud. 

By 2025–2026, a revolution in crime will take place; the language barrier will disappear thanks to AI, and fraudsters from anywhere in the world will be able to confidently communicate with the Russian-speaking population, warned the Sber Deputy Board Chairman.

The main challenges, Stanislav Kuznetsov believes, include the lack of regulation of gray technologies - droppers, crypto exchangers, virtual PBXs, as well as the mass participation of children and teenagers in fund withdrawal schemes.

As for personal data breaches, 3.5 billion lines have already been stolen, with as few as 1.5% of them accounting for leaks from banks, according to Sber. Retail chains and aggregators remain the main sources of data breaches. 

The speaker also touched upon the issues of biometrics, including false fears surrounding it. According to Stanislav Kuznetsov, biometric data cannot be stolen, since it is not a photograph, but a digital code that cannot be counterfeited.

In turn, State Secretary and Deputy Director of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service German Neglyad, who participated in the session, said they managed to block transactions worth over 300 billion rubles in 2024. However, banks, not government agencies, are responsible for doing the bulk of anti-fraud work, he believes.

Cryptocurrency exchanges remain outside the legal environment: unlike banks, they are not held liable. Another problem is virtual PBXs and SIM boxes, through which the main flow of calls goes. As a protection mechanism, there are guidelines for detecting unusual transactions that deviate from the client's financial behavior patterns, added German Neglyad.

Sergey Boyarsky, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, said that 2025 could be a turning point in the fight against fraud. The following key measures have been taken:

· Cooling-off period established for loans origination, especially online.

· Public services: self-ban on online loans and issuance of SIM cards.

· Introduction of the “two-hand principle”, i.e. confirmation of transactions by a trusted person.

· New anti-fraud systems will be introduced in ATMs.

· Liability for droppers is codified

· The fight against “gray” SIM cards is reaching a new level. 

This session of SPIEF 2025 highlighted the scale and complexity of the problem of telephone fraud in Russia. Despite high technology, existing protection mechanisms and the active work of banks and government agencies, cybercrime continues to adapt and use increasingly sophisticated methods.

The open dialogue at the forum showed that a comprehensive approach is needed to embrace the efforts of the state, the financial sector, technology companies and society. The sustainable reduction in damage from telephone and online fraudsters can only be achieved in the environment of systemic coordination and increased digital literacy of citizens.

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