Fraudsters created fake Telegram channels of the Sevastopol Election Commission

Fraudsters created fake Telegram accounts masquerading as the official channels of the Sevastopol City Election Commission and its chairman Nina Faustova. False information is being spread there about the launch of the digital service “Elections without Worries,” allegedly developed jointly with the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation and State Services.

Residents of Sevastopol are promised that with the help of a special chatbot they can “plan their visit to the polling station via an electronic queue in a few clicks or choose the DEG (remote electronic voting) format.”

In fact, advertisements for a non-existent digital service are posted by fake Telegram channels. Their main goal is to defraud citizens of personal data.

It is noteworthy that the channel “SevGorIzbirkom” and “Nina Faustova Z” were created only on September 14 - on the eve of the elections that will be held in Russia from September 18 to 20, 2026. In addition, both channels have approximately the same number of subscribers - 2.3 and 2.8 thousand, respectively, and duplicate publications of the official SevGorIzbirkom channel.

Another bot called “Elections without queues” is also being distributed! Sevastopol". He offers to sign up for a polling station without queuing, but when you press “start” it doesn’t work.

The Sevastopol City Election Commission has an official website, groups on VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, channels on Max and Telegram (the real channel has a little more than 940 subscribers). There is a warning about scammers becoming more active and creating fake accounts before the elections.

“Currently, scammers have created a fake Telegram channel of the Northern Electoral Commission and are calling for people to subscribe to certain channels and chat bots, promising to vote via the Internet. This is deception. Be careful! This year there is NO remote electronic voting (DEG) in Sevastopol. From September 9 to 17, you can vote early at polling stations and at home, the main voting days are September 18, 19 and 20,” the Sevastopol City Election Commission said in a statement.

It also clarifies that Nina Faustova does not have a personal Telegram channel.

The activities of fraudsters regularly intensify before significant events, including elections. Thus, in 2025, a second account of Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev appeared on Telegram, where he allegedly called for people to vote for him in the elections. And shortly before this, fake Telegram channels of the Sevastopol City Election Commission appeared. Then Nina Faustova warned citizens about this.

“We are determined to fight off fakes. Now the technologies for generating audio, video, and photographic images, which are difficult to distinguish from real ones, are downright cosmic. And we have already encountered this: last year and during the presidential campaign, both me and the Chairman of the Election Commission of the Republic of Crimea, Mikhail Grigorievich Malyshev, had already faked neural networks: we allegedly said that there was low interest in the elections. And it’s not for nothing that we tell voters: trust only official sources of information,” she said.

The news about the launch of a chatbot, supposedly as an aid for voting, did not spread in the media.