PECULIARITIES OF THE MECHANISM OF MARKING FORMATION WHEN COMMITTING A THEFT USING THE INFORMATION AND TELECOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING TECHNIQUES

One of the main ways of achieving mercenary purposes in thefts committed using the information and telecommunication technologies is the application of social engineering techniques implemented through the psychological influence methods and aimed at controlling the consciousness and behavior of people. Late identification of such thefts and the shortcomings when collecting primary material during the preliminary investigation indicate the necessity to study the features of their mechanism of marking formation. The paper deals with the forensic characteristics of the material, ideal, and electronic-digital traces peculiar for this type of crime. Material traces are represented as traces-objects (technical devices adapted for the social engineering methods implementation, SIM cards, bank cards, documents), and traces-displays (biological traces allowing to identify that the theft of funds is committed by a specific person using a particular technical device). As the ideal traces, the authors consider the mental image of a crime committed in the mind of a person presented in the evidence of a victim, suspect (accused), witness, expert, specialist, and other persons, resulting from the illegal remote actions of a suspect (an accused) to have psychological influence (the use of social engineering methods) on a victim using the information and telecommunication technologies. The paper defines digital traces, considers their specific examples depending on the use of the Internet and (or) computer, mobile devices, and the social engineering methods by intruders. The authors formulate the typical trace pattern of analyzed thefts, the knowledge of which allows obtaining the forensically important information on the way and nature of a crime, persons involved in it, and determining the tactics of follow-up law enforcement intelligence and investigative actions.