The Cuban content creator Anita alerted on Instagram about a type of scam that operates through calls to landlines in the early hours of the morning, in which criminals impersonate package deliverers to obtain personal information and money transfers via Transfermóvil.
According to Anita, the landline rang at 1:00 AM. "When I answered, they said: Good evening, do you have any relatives abroad?" she recalled. The scammers informed her that that relative had sent her a 50-pound package and that they needed to charge her 500 pesos for the home delivery.
The warning sign came when the criminals asked her to tell them her name. "If they really had a package for me, they should know my name, not ask for my details," Anita explained.
Additionally, the scammers asked him to "authenticate the mobile center" to transfer half of the payment upfront before receiving anything.
"They spoke quickly, with urgency. They tried to confuse me to take advantage of the fact that it was early in the morning," the author described. When she refused to make the transfer, the criminals blocked her immediately.
The video generated dozens of comments from people who confirmed receiving identical calls in the early morning hours.
Several testimonies indicate that the scammers identify themselves as representatives of the shipping agency Cubamax Travel. In another case, the scammer even presented himself as a "lieutenant colonel," apparently intending to lend more credibility to the call.
"We have to be extremely careful; they do not want to work honestly, they prefer to take advantage of people because they know that in homes, it is primarily adults and seniors who use the landline," wrote one of the affected users.
Another comment detailed that the scammers demanded a transfer of 1,500 pesos under the pretext of a "Business Contract." "When I told them it was a scam, they got upset and blocked me," the person recounted.
A third user noted that three of his neighbors received the same call, "they always do it very late at night."
This modality is not new. On April 11, clients of the Banco Popular de Ahorro in Sancti Spíritus reported real losses due to a technical variant: the scammers asked the victims to enter supposed "codes" such as "00005999" or "00012000" in the Transfermóvil amount field.
The application ignores leading zeros and processes actual transfers of 5,999 or 12,000 Cuban pesos. The Head of Electronic Banking of BPA in that province confirmed the fraud.
In many cases, criminals obtain the personal information of their victims —names, addresses, and phone numbers— directly from the labels of actual packages sent from abroad. At other times, they do so during the phone call itself.
This week, the Cuban Arianna Rodríguez Campillo reported a similar attempt: the scammers used fake names and set a fictitious delivery time for her "package from abroad" to make the scam more believable.
In January, another variant was documented where the criminals posed as lieutenant colonels from MININT, claiming that a relative was detained and demanding an "emergency bail" via electronic transfer.
Cubamax Travel, a legitimate company with 17 offices in Florida and Texas, alerted since October 2024 that its name and image were being impersonated. In an official statement, the agency warned: "We are not responsible for the criminal acts of these individuals" and recommended contacting them only through their official channel.
"This is not an isolated case; more and more people in Cuba are receiving similar calls," Anita warned in her video. "That they exist in Cuba is doubly lamentable, given the critical situation that everyone is enduring."
Filed under: