BENGALURU: After the ‘dubious parcel at Customs’ scam and ‘digital arrest’ scare, cyber fraudsters have come up a new trick to reach your money: a gift of a free mobile or tablet which gladdens the receiver. This one is delivered to the doorstep from unknown people, claiming they are from banks.
Beware, it’s only a Trojan horse from cyber fraudsters. The mobile is likely be cloned, and once the receiver inserts a SIM card, all banking details and OTPs are shared with the con gang. One such case was registered with Whitefield CEN police station, of a techie losing Rs 2.8 crore.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Whitefield) Shivakumar Gunare said this new type of cyber scam was recently reported in the city, after a fraudster posing as a private bank representative sent a mobile phone as a gift to the software engineer.
The fraudster claimed that the bank had approved a credit card for the victim, and due to his good credit score, he was eligible to receive a free mobile phone. The fraudster had earlier contacted the victim with a credit card offer, and convinced him to take the card, police said,
Following this, a new mobile phone was sent to the techie’s address. The victim inserted a SIM card into the phone, which had pre-installed cloning software. This software was configured in such a way that no messages or emails from the bank would be received on his device.
A week later, the techie noticed that funds were debited from his FD account. Since phone was cloned, the OTPs sent by the bank were redirected to the fraudster’s account. Upon enquiring at the bank, the victim learnt that the money had been siphoned off by fraudsters, after which he approached the police.