Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — A school student in Samarkand posed as a traffic police officer and defrauded citizens by offering to help them pay administrative fines, Uzbekistan’s Road Safety Service reported.
According to the agency, the teenager created a Telegram account using the name of Khurshid Safarov, head of the Information Service of the Road Safety Department.
He used photographs taken from Safarov’s Instagram page to set up the profile.
Posing as the official, the teenager contacted vehicle owners, telling them they had unpaid fines and offering to help settle them.
He asked them to transfer money to specified bank cards. According to the teenager, some people sent him 100,000 and 50,000 soums. He kept the money for himself.
The teenager admitted his guilt and said he regretted his actions. His father also apologised to the citizens and said he intended to take personal responsibility for his son's upbringing.
Officers from the Samarkand Regional Department for Combating Cybercrime detained the suspect.
Initial investigative measures are underway to establish all the circumstances of the incident and determine whether the teenager may have been involved in other offences.
Law enforcement authorities urged citizens not to transfer money to people contacting them through social media while posing as internal affairs officers and to report such cases to the relevant authorities.
