Alexandrov Evgeny Borisovich

Alexandrov Evgeny Borisovich

Biography

2024: Gerta telephone scammers

On June 9, 2024, it became known that in St. Petersburg, a famous physicist became a victim of telephone fraudsters. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yevgeny Alexandrov transferred 1.9 million rubles to the attackers, which they allegedly requested to register his patents in the Russian Wikipedia program.

According to RIA Novosti, referring to information received in the press service of the regional headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, fraudsters first contacted 88-year-old Alexandrov on May 30, 2024. He received a call from a certain woman who introduced herself as an employee of Russian Wikipedia. She told the man that his patents "need to be registered with her program." After that, the pensioner received an SMS message from the bank, the information from which was transmitted to the interlocutor.

A few days later, on June 5, 2024, Alexandrov received an email from the bank announcing the sale of his securities. An amount of 1,991,840 rubles was transferred from the man's account - these funds were received by third parties through the sale of the victim's assets. Upon learning of the fraud, Alexandrov turned to the police. The criminal case was initiated under Part 4 of Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (theft committed by an organized group on an especially large scale). Such crimes are punishable by imprisonment for up to 10 years with a fine of up to 1 million rubles or in the amount of the convict's salary or other income for a period of up to five years or without it and with restriction of freedom for up to two years or without it.

Alexandrov in 1978 was awarded the USSR State Prize for a series of works on the detection and study of new optical phenomena. As of June 2024, the academician works at the Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology and heads the RAS commission on combating pseudoscience.^[1]

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