Ever-evolving tactics of online fraudsters

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The City Police Commissioner on Friday alerted the citizens on another form of cybercrime which a few miscreants have adapted to siphon off money from gullible victims.

The city top cop related a true incident that was reported recently in the city where an elderly person lost more than Rs 1.5 lakh while trying to order a box of sweets from a popular shop in Bengaluru.

However the victim had used Google to search the contact number of the bakery.

"A 72-year-old victim while trying to search for a sweets shop on the internet, found a contact number and placed an order asking the shop to deliver sweets to his house in the city. The person on the other side asked the victim to send the money online on a number shared by him," said B Dayananda.

Despite paying the amount, when the victim did not receive the delivery, he contacted the person again. The person denied receiving any amount from the victim and asked him to send the money again.

Convinced that it might be a technical glitch, the elderly person was tricked into making another transaction of the same amount.

"This time, the fraudsters pretended to assist the victim in making a payment and made him log into his mobile payment app. They also asked him to mention Rs 30,000 in the payment column and convinced him that the '30,000' is actually a special code for an offer," explained the Police Commissioner.

After the transaction, the miscreants called the victim and asked to make two more similar transactions with the same amount claiming that the previous ones had failed.

Further claiming that all his transactions have failed, they asked the victim to redo the process using another mobile phone.

"In total Rs 1.5 lakh were siphoned off from the victim's bank account and Rs 30,000 were deducted from his friend's bank account in the process," the commissioner said.

Getting suspicious, the victim visited the sweets shop himself and asked about the issue. He was shocked when the shop denied calling him or receiving any funds from him.

They said they don't deliver sweets to customer's doorstep. This was when the victim realised that he had been duped and approached the jurisdictional police for help.

He found that the contact number which he had dialed to place an order does not belong to the sweets shop. In such cases, the fraudsters modify the coordinates of a company or store listed on Google and then use the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods to make sure these fake contact numbers are listed right at the top of the search results.

"The contact numbers keep changing in a few days making it difficult to track. However we have written about this to Google," the police said.

Meanwhile the Bengaluru Police Commissioner adviced the citizens to beware of such online frauds and verify the contact numbers that they find on the internet.