The NBU told about the future problems of "drops"

It is currently difficult to assess the full extent of the problem of using drops due to the imitation of the usual behavior of individuals, while in the future they will face restrictions on access to banking services, Ekonomichna Pravda reports.

Dmytro Oliynyk, Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, wrote about this in his column.

"Droppers" are people who, for a fee, provide intruders/fraudsters with access to their bank details: cards/accounts, including pin codes and access to online banking.

"Between June 2023 and January 2024, we received information from the Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries, the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Cyber Police about more than 1,500 cards that were found on various illegal casino websites, crypto-asset exchange systems, websites selling excisable goods, etc.", Oliynyk wrote.

According to him, after checking the information on these cards together with the issuing banks, the NBU collected detailed statistics on more than 700 unique customers who received UAH 1.8 billion in 2023, and then the entire amount was withdrawn from their accounts or transferred to other cards.

"However, in general, the system includes tens of thousands of dormant or even active accounts operating under the drop scheme. The NBU's recommendations and algorithms for detecting drops already implemented by banks have made it possible to recognize abnormal customer behavior and then terminate their services," the NBU deputy governor wrote.

For example, one of the largest issuing banks identified more than 12 thousand drop customers in October 2023-April 2024 alone, while another bank created algorithms to search for compromised cards and during this period was able to identify more than 5 thousand cards used on various illegal casino sites.

Oliynyk described a typical portrait of a dropout. These are representatives of socially disadvantaged groups, pensioners, students with low or medium level of expected income to their accounts. They often have accounts in many banks at the same time. You can recognize a "drop-in" by the following signs:

• they are either a new customer at the bank or have not had any transactions on their account for a long time, but at some point abnormal card activity begins (high intensity of credits and payments);
• more than 97% of the turnover is made up of transfers and almost always there are no ordinary transactions for the purchase of goods, works and services or cash withdrawals;
• transfers have almost no common criteria or indicators - different checks, different recipients, different senders;
• the number of transfers can reach hundreds per day, and the turnover can exceed UAH 50-100 thousand.

"Drops can be divided into those who deliberately sell their details and accesses, as well as those who act under the influence of misleading and social engineering, agreeing to tempting easy money.

Both money obtained through cybercrime, i.e. stolen from the accounts of legal entities and individuals as a result of phishing or vishing, and money obtained through drug, weapons or other criminal means, are transferred through drop accounts.

"So, there is no difference whether such a person is consciously or not, but he or she becomes an accomplice to the crime and spoils his or her own payment history. If the bank discovers that an individual's account has been used for illegal payment transactions, it will take appropriate actions, ranging from a complete refusal to service such an individual to transferring data to law enforcement agencies," said the deputy head of the National Bank.

According to him, special centralized registers (similar to those used by credit bureaus) will be created to record the data of persons involved in the above schemes. These data will be used by all participants in the banking and financial markets, and in the future, possibly, by tax authorities.

"Accordingly, drops will face restrictions on access to banking services and will likely have problems with employment (especially when it comes to government agencies and law enforcement agencies)," Oliynyk concluded.

Viktor Volokita