Suspected scammers from Jharkhand’s Jamtara region makes a Delhi man lose Rs.50 lakh even without sharing OTP just by receiving fraudulent missed calls.
The statutory warnings are always given for not sharing the OTP with someone by cyber crime officials to make people aware of the cyber frauds asking for a one-time password(OTP)via call, sms or emails. But, in this recent incident the man has become a victim of cyber fraud and lost Rs.50 lakhs by just giving a missed call. Apparently, no OTP was asked and several transactions were made across the multiple accounts of the said victim.
The South Delhi man who works as a director of security services reportedly lost Rs.50 lakhs to a cyber fraud. A few days ago, the victim received repeated blank and missed calls between 7pm and 8:45pm. Some of the calls were ignored whereas some were picked but there was no answer from the other side. After a while the victim was shocked to see messages of Real Time Gross Settlement(RTGS) and fund transfer transactions on his mobile for nearly half a crore.
According to an initial probe the scammers might be from Jharkhand’s Jamtara and the recipient of all the fraudulent money has rented the account to the fraudsters for commission.
In the Jamtara scam the fraudsters based in jamtara city ask victims to download screen mirroring apps in order to steal bank account numbers, passwords and OTPs to transact money.In the latest case the police are suspecting that a “SIM swap” fraud is performed by the cheat. In order to start the RTGS transfer and activate the OTP the blank or missed calls were given. The possibility is that the scammers might have received the OTP in an adjacent call’s IVR.
The police officer informed that in this fraud the scammers contacted the victim’s mobile phone carriers and tricked them to activate a SIM card. And once it is done the phone is under their control.
SIM Swap fraud:
Using the flaw in two-factor authentication and verification the scammers use the phone number to access the victim’s account.In order to switch the SIM, these fraudsters contact the SIM provider of a particular phone to activate a SIM card that belongs to them. Once this activation is done these scammers have control over the victim’s phone number and can receive or control calls and text.