Visakhapatnam police issue caution advisory against cyber fraudsters

Beware of cyber fraudsters posing as courier agents, TRAI officials, and credit card staff to scam public of money.

The city police have issued an advisory over fake calls by unidentified cyber fraudsters to loot money from the public in the name of courier agents, TRAI orders, credit card bill payments and some other methods. This year alone, the cybercrime police have received around 100 such cases where the victims lost over ₹20 crore.

In case of credit card payment frauds, the cyber fraudsters have been approaching public through phone calls and claiming themselves as staff of the credit card section of some bank. They inform people that some amount is due on their credit card. When the victim informs that he does not have any credit card or that they had already paid the bill, then the fraudsters redirect the phone to some other fraudster, who checks the mobile number, Aadhaar number and further informs that a person in Mumbai has been using credit card on his name. The fraudster also terrorises saying that the person who was using the credit card has made several illegal transactions.

In some cases, the fraudsters call people associated with medical labs and claim themselves as representatives from Army. They inform that they would condut medical tests for about 30 to 50 Army personnel in the lab. Further they make a video call to establish confidence and then seek money from the lab owners.

The police also said that there are some cases in which the miscreants contact the people in the name of representatives from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), where they inform that a number was taken on their Aadhaar number and through the number some persons from Mumbai/Chennai have made phone calls to some terrorist groups. After gaining confidence, they try to get some money from the public.

The city has already seen a number of courier scams where the fraudsters posing as law enforcement officials, call the victim saying that a parcel was booked on their name in which they have found unauthorised materials like fake passports, narcotics or ammunition. And when the victim panics, they demand money to be transferred to fake RBI accounts.

Inspector of cybercrime police station Bhavani Prasad said that initially courier scams, popularly known as Fedex scams, used to come to light. Since more awareness is created on this scam, the cyber fraudsters were approaching people with novel methods and looting money. He said that their main focus was to target people and then terrorise them by saying that their credit card or phone number or even courier packages which were booked on their names have some terror links or booked in anti-social activities.

The Inspector said that in a latest incident, a person from the city has lost ₹3.75 crore in TRAI fraud.