Kherson residents receive a request for help on behalf of the former mayor

In Kherson, fraudsters began posing as former mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko and asking for financial assistance. In fact, he did not address citizens with such requests.

This was reported by Most.

Messages from fraudsters posing as the former mayor of Kherson, Volodymyr Mykolayenko, have begun to appear on the Internet. The attackers send users requests for "moral and, if possible, financial support" using his name.

Mykolayenko himself emphasized in a commentary to journalists that he does not have any personal pages on social media, and all such messages are fake.

The former mayor of Kherson was recently released from Russian captivity. He was abducted by the Russian military on April 18, 2022, after he refused offers of cooperation with the occupiers. After his refusals, Mykolayenko received constant threats.

At first, he was held in Kherson, where he appeared in propaganda videos. Later, the prisoner was transferred. In November 2022, nothing was known about his whereabouts, and later the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that Mykolayenko was in Russian captivity.

It is known that back in 2022, during one of the exchanges, he refused to return home in order to release a seriously ill Ukrainian prisoner of war. He is currently undergoing treatment after his captivity, but admits that he feels guilty towards those who are still waiting for his release.

Cases of fraudsters asking for money on behalf of officials are not uncommon. For example, in August, cyber police exposed a group of fraudsters who were collecting money under the guise of officials, allegedly for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. One of them introduced himself as the head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration and convinced people to transfer money to controlled accounts.

To make it more believable, the criminals produced fake documents signed by the head of the region and created fake accounts in Telegram. In this way, they misled entrepreneurs and citizens, forcing them to transfer money to bank accounts opened in the names of fictitious persons.

Last year, in Mykolaiv region, fraudsters sent fake messages to businesses asking them to transfer money allegedly to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The criminals did this on behalf of Vitaliy Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration. The fraudulent appeals were designed to resemble official documents and, although they contained numerous errors, looked quite convincing.

Анна Бальчінос