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A Cuban woman reported losing 70,000 pesos after transferring the money to a WhatsApp account that criminals had taken control of from one of her contacts, offering cash in return, in a scam that repeats with impunity across the island.
The affected individual explained in a message to CiberCuba that she needed to withdraw cash from her bank account—something increasingly difficult due to the chronic liquidity crisis that Cuba is experiencing—and saw the offer as a legitimate solution because it came from someone she knew.
"I had 70,000 pesos in my account and needed to withdraw them, so I agreed to send them to him in exchange for cash. I repeat: he was one of my contacts and I knew him. What I didn't know was that his WhatsApp had been hacked," the victim wrote.
"I transferred the 70,000 pesos and waited for hours for him to tell me that he was in front of my house to collect the cash, which never happened," he added.
The mechanism is not technically sophisticated: the criminals convince the owner of a WhatsApp account to share the six-digit verification code that the application sends via SMS, allowing them to register that account on another device and impersonate the identity of the contact to all their acquaintances.
The cash shortage is the perfect breeding ground for this fraud. The ATMs often appear empty or out of service, bank lines can last for hours, and withdrawal limits are restrictive, which has created an informal market where commissions range from 5% to 30% for obtaining physical cash.
When trying to file a complaint, the victim encountered another obstacle: her mother wanted to file the report in the province where they live, but the police informed her that it needed to be done in the province where the victim was located, which was in another province.
"I wonder: how many more people have been scammed through WhatsApp? The police do nothing and never find the culprits. The cards they send are real, and the phone numbers too. So, why don't they find the responsible parties?" she questioned.
The post triggered an avalanche of testimonies from victims of digital scams in Cuba. Damary Jorge Fonseca reported losing 86,000 pesos and has been waiting for over two months without a response. Iris Gálvez stated that her brother's account was taken over, and through it, 80,000 pesos were scammed. Vermaidis Gamboa Matos claimed that over a year ago she was scammed out of 200 MLC by someone impersonating her uncle, "and the police never did anything."
The institutional pattern is uniform: the police do not investigate and the bank cannot provide information without a police order, while ETECSA also does not take action, creating a bureaucratic circle that ensures impunity. Vivian González Medina summarized it this way: "The bank has all the information about the card to which I transferred the money, but they cannot provide it without a police order. All in vain."
Yuduslidia Garriga detailed having reported on February 21 to the PNR of Jimaguayú, in Camagüey, and that months later they continue to tell her that the ETECSA report is missing. Amelia Fernández recounted that the bank manager told her father, who was also a victim of the same scam, that "no one instructed him to make the transfer, and that it's not their problem."
The Banco de Crédito y Comercio (Bandec) in Matanzas issued a public alert about the rise of these scams in collaboration with the PNR in April, but the accumulated testimonies show that the warning has not been followed by results. A survey conducted in Las Tunas that same month revealed that 84% of participants were aware of victims of digital scams or had personally experienced them.
Lázaro Linares, one of the commentators, pointed out the central contradiction: "The cards are not from a foreign bank; they are from a Cuban bank where the government has total control. We have to wait for someone to think of defrauding the state for them to take action on this."
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