The essence of this scam, oddly enough, is extremely simple, but it brings in a decent income. The fraudsters take a paid number and disguise it as a regular city or mobile number, for example, like MTS, where calls between subscribers are not charged. From a technical point of view, organizing such a "gray" scheme with number spoofing is not particularly difficult.
Then SMS messages come into play with text like: "I scratched your car, call me: 050-xxx". Naturally, it is more effective to send such messages specifically to car owners. To do this, you can get a client database from insurance company employees or use other ways to obtain the necessary contacts.
After that, the fraudsters only have to wait for calls and count the profit, multiplying the number of calls by a hefty tariff. You can even connect an answering machine so as not to miss anything. Of course, such a scheme will actively work only for the first month or two, until the general public learns about it. However, during this period, the scammers manage to collect a very substantial amount and come up with a new way to relatively honestly take money from gullible people.
The only recommendation here is to think about how the sender of the message got your number, and not be too lazy to personally approach the car to make sure whether there is damage on it, as mentioned in the SMS.
Also, do not miss our article: "Car setups with pedestrians. How fraudsters simulate hitting a pedestrian".
