Police warn residents of a new kind of phishing using courier threats on the prowl

Chennai police warns residents about a cyber fraud trend involving fake parcel interceptions and urgent payment demands.

The Chennai police have advised residents to be aware of the latest trend in cyber fraud — where the gullible are tricked by callers who claim that one of their parcels has been intercepted by authorities because it contains contraband, and asked to pay to relieve them of the trouble. By impersonating courier company staff and even “customs officers”, these callers create a sense of urgency, telling their victim to pay a sum immediately, or face prosecution. Once the money is paid, they vanish.

Arun Kumar, a 40-year-old top-level executive, received a call from an unknown number on the morning of November 8. The caller claimed to be a representative of courier major FedEx, from its Mumbai branch. He said that a parcel was received in Arun’s name which was supposed to be sent to Thailand. It was returned to FedEx since it contained a bogus address and had illegal items in it. The caller told him that the parcel was sent on November 6, 2023 from Mumbai to Thailand via FedEx courier in his name and address mentioned on the parcel. The caller also claimed the parcel contained five passports, three credit cards, ₹5000 cash, four kilos of clothes and 140 gram of MDMA, a drug. 

Arun said, “So when I heard the above-mentioned items in the parcel, I was shocked. I have been in Chennai from the day I was born and someone has misused my name and address without my knowledge. So the caller told me that he would connect the call to the Mumbai Cyber Crime Wing and asked me to file a complaint immediately without any further delay. Otherwise, I would be in trouble. The caller connected me to another person who claimed to be DCP of Cyber Crime, Mumbai. He asked me to connect via a mobile app called Skype to record the conversation. The Skype address seemed to be Mumbai Cyber Crime Police. Now, the man on the other end asked me to go to a separate room and talk.” 

The complainant further narrates, “The caller asked me to transfer money to a bank account number.  He told me not to talk to anyone about it at the bank or talk to anyone until the transfer was done. Once the RTGS transfer is done which will take 5 minutes as mentioned by the DCP, I thought I would be refunded, but that never happened. I tried calling them on Skype 10 times after 10 minutes to ask them to return the money but they did not answer my calls. Only then did I realise, it was a scam and I had been duped. They also deleted all the proof on the Skype app too. I transferred ₹62.99 lakh and lost it all.” 

Police said many have fallen prey to the cyber fraudsters in the last few weeks in the city, using a similar modus operandi. 

A senior police officer said the victim would be informed over the video call that his/ her Aadhaar has been used to open bank accounts in Mumbai and used for Hawala transactions. If the victims say they would prefer a complaint with their local police station in Chennai, they argue that if they co-operated, the entire issue would be cleared up within an hour. The whole scam rests on their ability to speak in a manner that will induce fear in the victim, and in a desire to be cleared of this sudden issue, they land up paying for parcels they had never ordered, or sent or received, and are duped.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Cyber Crime V.V.Geethanjali said, “The fraudsters target people who have high salaries. They claim they can ‘digitally arrest’ the victim and tell them that they have a warrant on him or her, since the parcel has contraband, and even send a ‘warrant’ on WhatsApp. Sometimes fraudsters do not ask money at first but would collect details of login credentials of bank accounts or mutual funds or fixed deposits. Then the fraudster would ask the victim to install Skype. Then, increasing the fear component, they will start extracting money. When we get the complaints and check, the IP address used by the fraudsters are usually in Thailand or Hong Kong.”