Alrosa has issued an urgent warning after fraudsters posed as recruitment and tender agents to extract cash and personal data — a risk that can translate into direct financial loss and reputational damage for traders and buyers in the US diamond market.
- Price: N/A
- Carat weight: N/A
- Origin: Russia (Alrosa)
- Date: January 2026
What Alrosa reported
The Russian miner said “individuals and legal entities” received messages from scammers impersonating recruitment agencies and offering “vacancies” or purported “special opportunities.” The notices arrived via international numbers on WhatsApp, Telegram and social media and included links to phishing sites for fake “tender schemes” that asked recipients to register, supply personal information and make cash deposits.
Alrosa’s alert notes how the fraudsters work “through deception and manipulation, under the guise of ‘special promotions’ or corporate company events” to persuade people to transfer funds to bogus accounts. The company emphasised that legitimate employee correspondence uses only corporate email addresses with the @alrosa.ru domain.
Image: An Alrosa machine for sorting and weighing rough diamonds. (Alrosa)
Context: why this matters in 2025–26
Fraud of this kind has amplified significance now that the trade leans on digital tender portals, provenance platforms and remote onboarding to satisfy sustainability and traceability demands. Those systems, intended to give provenance a vitreous luster, also create new attack surfaces for impostors who seek the substantial heft of advance payments or sensitive supplier data.
At the same time, price pressure across sectors — including lab-grown supply chains where margins can be thin — increases the incentive for opportunistic behaviour and reduces tolerance for delays caused by compromised tenders or frozen payments.
Practical steps for US retailers and investors
- Verify identities: insist that any Alrosa contact use an @alrosa.ru email address and confirm via the company’s published phone numbers before engaging.
- Hold payments: never transfer deposits to accounts introduced in unsolicited messages. Use escrow, letters of credit or bank-verified accounts for new counterparties.
- Protect data: decline registration on unknown tender links and require secure portals with multi-factor authentication for supplier onboarding.
- Train teams: refresh procurement and HR staff on phishing vectors common on WhatsApp and Telegram and log suspicious outreach centrally.
- Report and document: notify Alrosa and relevant authorities of fraudulent approaches and keep chain-of-custody records to limit reputational exposure.
Alrosa’s advisory is a reminder that the immediate cost of fraud can be small in headline terms but substantial in consequence: lost funds, interrupted supply and damaged buyer confidence. For US buyers and investors, disciplined verification and tightened payment controls are the practical defence.
Image Referance: https://rapaport.com/news/alrosa-warns-of-scam-by-fake-recruiters/