Moscow police report 23,300 remote thefts in nine months

Moscow recorded more than 23,300 remote thefts in the first nine months of 2026, police official Anton Kononenko said on October 14. He identified Telegram and WhatsApp as the main messaging services used by perpetrators.

The head of Moscow’s cybercrime unit spoke at a press conference, Interfax reported. He warned that state agencies would not contact citizens through messengers to demand that they carry out transactions or other actions.

Reporting from the same conference, Kommersant said Moscow registered more than 34,400 cybercrimes overall between January and September. That total was down 19.7% from the corresponding period.

The broader cybercrime figure and the remote-theft count cover different categories. Kononenko’s assessment of messaging services describes their use by offenders and does not establish that every offence involved those platforms.