Students Recruited as Money Mules: How Scammers Target Youth with Fake Jobs, Gaming Lures and Sextortion
Russian students and schoolchildren face growing risks from fraud schemes that promise easy money, free gaming rewards, or urgent academic fixes while turning victims into unwitting accomplices or direct targets of theft.
Scammers no longer rely solely on bank impersonation calls. Instead they embed offers into everyday student life by advertising part-time work, promising free Robux, or claiming to represent a university dean’s office.
Youth vulnerabilities such as first bank cards, job searches, and limited experience with verification make this demographic attractive. Criminals use urgency, social proof from social media, and small initial payments to build trust before escalating demands.
Seven prevalent schemes
Dropper recruitment via bank cards offers several thousand rubles daily for receiving and forwarding transfers. Participants risk prosecution under Article 187 of the Criminal Code effective since July 2025, with penalties up to six years imprisonment, plus banking blacklisting by the Bank of Russia.
Fake vacancies and task scams begin with paid micro-tasks then demand deposits to unlock larger earnings that never materialize.
University impersonation calls request one-time codes from SMS or push victims toward fake scholarship sites, often followed by secondary calls posing as law enforcement.
Gaming lures promise free items in Roblox, Minecraft, or Brawl Stars and deliver malware or credential-harvesting sites. Modified game clients frequently contain infostealers.
Marketplace fraud and investment scams push users off-platform to fake payment pages or fraudulent trading dashboards.
Account takeover and sextortion use compromised contacts or AI-generated intimate images, countered by services such as Take It Down and StopNCII.org.
Recommended defenses include enabling two-factor authentication on Gosuslugi, email, and banking apps, using dedicated low-limit cards for online purchases, and verifying unexpected requests through independent official channels.
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