Over a thousand fraud convictions have already been handed down in 2024

The number of fraud cases is increasing year by year. Currently, at least 42,787 court verdicts have been found using the “Grandma” court registry search engine. Last year, the number of such verdicts was record-breaking — over 3,100. For comparison, in 2021, 2,300 verdicts were found under Article 190.

Fraud related to real estate rental constitutes a significant portion of all cases. This includes schemes involving the use of free housing search platforms. For instance, only the OLX classifieds website is mentioned in the context of 363 criminal cases. Fraudsters actively use this resource, posing as sellers or landlords of non-existent real estate.

In one such case, the criminal used OLX to post advertisements for the rental of a non-existent apartment. He demanded an upfront payment from potential tenants as a “guarantee” for viewing the apartment and signing the contract. After receiving the money, the scammer disappeared without fulfilling his promises. It is known that in this way the criminal deceived at least 21 victims for a total amount of over 19,000 hryvnias. For his scheme, the perpetrator was sentenced to 5 years and 7 months in prison.

«In 2023, the OLX Ukraine platform received over 2 million complaints regarding suspicious advertisements. Approximately 50% of the ads with such complaints were removed, with 40% of them being blocked as intending to harm users of the service. It is worth noting that one advertisement can receive several complaints.»

— commented Viktor Nobyuz, Head of Business Analytics Department at OLX Ukraine

To protect yourself from fraud, Opendatabot has developed a service that allows you to check the owner of an apartment before renting it.

To feel safe, it’s always worth verifying the property ownership rights of the landlord. This way, you’ll be less likely to encounter scammers, ensure that the rental agreement is legitimate, avoid potential issues, and protect your rights in case of conflict.

Simply obtain the landlord’s tax identification number. With this information, you can use the Opendatabot service to check if the person has ownership rights to the apartment.