Phishing SMS Scams Surge in Czechia — Victims Lose Tens of Thousands of Crowns Over Fake Fines and Parcels

Fraudsters posing as government agencies and delivery companies have stepped up their activity across Czechia in recent weeks, flooding phones with fake SMS messages. Victims have already lost tens and even hundreds of thousands of crowns after trying to pay what looked like small fines or fees.

One of the most common scams involves messages claiming a speeding ticket or other traffic violation. The text insists the fine must be paid within a few days and includes a link to a website designed to look like an official government portal. In reality, it's a fake page built solely to harvest personal data and bank card details.

Scammers run several versions of the same scheme: some messages refer to a supposed "electronic traffic monitoring system," while others claim to come from a fictitious Czech Road Traffic Safety Authority. In every case, the goal is the same — to pile on psychological pressure by threatening court action, administrative proceedings, or a growing debt, pushing victims to act quickly without thinking things through.

Recent cases show just how effective this pressure can be. In the Šumperk area, a woman believed an SMS about a speeding fine, clicked the link, entered her car's license plate, and then her bank card details, thinking she was paying a fine of one thousand crowns. Instead, scammers withdrew 1,000 dollars — roughly 21,000 crowns — from her account.

Alongside this, fake parcel-delivery messages are spreading widely. Scammers claim a delivery has been suspended or that a small fee is needed to confirm the address. The link leads to a fake courier company website where victims are asked to enter their card details.

That's exactly how a twenty-year-old man from the Přerov area lost 100,000 crowns: believing a message about a paused delivery, he entered his card details to cover a supposed 120-crown fee. Two days later, he discovered that around one hundred thousand crowns had vanished from his account.

A similar case occurred in the Prostějov area — a 32-year-old man responded to an SMS asking him to confirm his delivery address, entered his details on a fake courier site to pay a 39-crown fee, and a few days later found that roughly 93,000 crowns had disappeared from his account.

Experts point out that using small amounts is one of the fraudsters' key tricks: sums of a few dozen or a hundred crowns rarely raise suspicion, so people enter their card details without much hesitation. Scammers then use that same data to carry out far larger transactions.

Read also: Savings accounts in Czechia: bank rates for 2026

Source: novinky.cz