YEREVAN, November 29. /ARKA/. Armenian citizens lose from $500,000 to $1 million to online scams and fraudsters a week, information security expert Samvel Martirosyan said in an interview with Arka Business program on YouTube channel.

"The situation with cybercrime is very bad, even dire, but since there are no statistics, it seems that everything is fine,' he said, adding that his estimate is based on the crimes that were reported to him by Internet users.

'They are in dozens and some of them lose large amounts, but the bulk are small amounts," he said.

Martirosyan separately drew attention to the problem of lack of statistics on fake crypto investors for several reasons: first, most of the victims do not apply to law enforcement agencies out of fear that they themselves have violated the law, and second, some of them do not trust state structures. 

"When the money has already been transferred (to the fraudsters) the situation is almost hopeless, but there is one nuance. If they report the crimes to law enforcement bodies, then theoretically, if the fraudsters are caught, there is hope that some of the lost money can be recovered," he said. 

Thirdly, he said, a significant part of deceived citizens do not realize that they have been cheated. 

"A person gets into drawn-out processes where they are told that they have violated this or that law. All this lasts for months, money is written off. And it seems to the person that it is his/her  own fault, that he himself made a mistake. The problem is that we have no real statistics," he said.  -0-