Woman duped of ₹1.46 lakh in cyber fraud in Navi Mumbai

A 47-year-old interior decorator was cheated of ₹1.46 lakh in a phishing attack after the caller claimed to activate her e-SIM.

A 47-year-old interior decorator was cheated of ₹1.46 lakh in a phishing attack after the caller claimed to activate her e-SIM.

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According to police, complainant Mahalaxmi Vyankat received a call from the fraudster who posed as a customer service executive from a popular telecom company. The caller claimed that her SIM is old and will be discontinued soon. To avoid this, the company is issuing an e-SIM.

“To gain her trust, the accused read out her email ID. She also cross-checked the caller ID and it flashed as customer service. She then agreed for the e-SIM activation,” said an officer from Kharghar police station.

She later received a message from a three-digit helpline number which said that the verification had started. The caller told her that her number would be off for the next 24 hours. When her number was not activated after 24 hours, she called the customer care helpline from another number to inquire about her connection’s status.

The executives informed her she has fallen for online financial fraud and asked her to check her bank balance. When Vyankat tried to log in to her bank account, she realized her password had been changed. She checked her email only to realise ₹1.46 lakh had been siphoned off from her account using her credit card.

Meanwhile, Between March and July this year, 58 cases of online cheating and OTP related frauds were registered in Navi Mumbai.

Over 48 cases of online frauds including vishing and phishing attacks were registered between March and July this year in which victims lost ₹60.60 lakh. 10 cases of OTP related frauds were registered where victims lost ₹8.22 lakh, as per the cyber cell’s data.

The state’s advisory also urged people to not reveal personal or financial details in an email or open any attachments and links sent by unknown persons.

The Maharashtra cyber cell recently issued an advisory that phishing kits are being sold on online hacker forums on the dark web. These easy to use kits are designed for people with little to no technical knowledge of the scams but help them quickly learn how to run the scam.

The advisory issued by the special inspector general of police, Maharashtra cyber, states, “Online hacker forums have a huge collection of more than 1,300 phishing kits on sale that cover top-rated websites, banks and financial organisations. The low average price of these phishing kits is to attract more cyber-criminals into buying them to commit different sorts of phishing scams.”

“The phishing kits are virtual packages with fake domain page, fake numbers to use for fraudsters. Since everything is virtual, the fraudsters easily set up a virtual WhatsApp and Telegram account using the fake number. These packages also allow spoofing, wherein the fraudster calls the target victim from a fake number, but they would receive the call displaying it as an authentic number, for example, a bank’s helpline number,” said Vicky Shah, cyber expert.