Educated people falling prey to cyber frauds in Ludhiana

Tribune News Service

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Ludhiana, January 15

As per an estimate of the Cyber Wing of the Ludhiana Commissionerate, nearly 95 per cent of cyber complaints are lodged by educated people and working professionals.

Talking to The Tribune, ACP (Cyber Crime) Rajesh Snehi said: “Most of the people who get cheated through online frauds are educated. It include bank professionals, businessman, salaried class, working women etc. It is not that educated persons are more gullible as compared to the uneducated lot but cyber criminals convince them in such a way that they easily share OTP or click on the dubious links send by the crooks.

Sharing some unique cases, ACP Rajesh said recently a case was reported in which the fraudster posing as a Army official called the senior officer of an insurance company and shared a list of Army jawans for life insurance policies. “The insurance officer felt happy as he was getting chance to issue insurance policies to the group of Armymen. After taking the insurance officer into confidence, the accused shared a link to connect the payment method, the moment insurance officer clicked on the link, his Rs 70,000 was immediately deducted from the account of the victim,” revealed ACP Rajesh.

Similarly, a lab technician was cheated by man posing as Army officer who called the former to get medical test of dozens of Army jawans. The fraudster shared an QR code with the technician following which Rs 80,000 got debited from his bank account.

In another case, cyber crook called the shopkeeper and raised demand of installation of several water purifiers in different schools. Accused told the shopkeeper that he want to send some advance money and he sent a link, and asked to share the OTP, the moment shopkeeper shares OTP he lost Rs 40,000 to the cyber criminal.

Inspector Cyber Crime Pawan Kumar said these days fake advertisements of free pizza delivery are cropping up on Facebook and when anyone under the greed click on those adds, and click on further links, money gets deducted from their accounts.

Inspector also shared that a relative of Punjab Police DSP had also lost Rs 1 lakh from his credit card to cyber criminal he shared OTP.

“If ATM card coloning is done by criminals then bank has to return the withdrawn money but if OTP is shared then a person is himself responsible for the loss. Still to recover the money, if a person immediately calls on state cyber cell number 155260 then his money can be saved as cyber cell immediately contact the banks to freeze the account where money is credited,” said Inspector Pawan. He added that most of the cyber gangs are operating from Bharatpur in Rajasthan, Mewat in Haryana, Mathura, Jamtara in Jharkhand.

ACP (Cyber Crime) Rajesh Snehi, inspector Cyber Crime Inspector Pawan Kumar with their efforts have managed to recover over Rs 17.46 lakh fraudulently taken by cyber criminals.

Don’t share voter ID card details with dubious calls

ACP Rajesh said cyber criminals commit fraud according to the ongoing trend. Now, as Assembly elections are round the corner, cyber criminals may call you to send voter ID card details and may ask to click on the link to verify the address and you may lose money.

ACP warns against AnyDesk remote desktop app

ACP Rajesh Snehi said these days cyber criminal lure people by telling them that they won a random cash lottery. They ask the victims to download Any Desk Remote Software app to complete the formalities. Once the user download this app, entire mobile data gets visible to the cyber criminal and they can easily steal OTP they send via payment apps like Google Pay, PhonePe to withdraw money.

Beware of suspicious links, calls

Talking to The Tribune, ACP (Cyber Crime) Rajesh Snehi said: “Most of the people who get cheated through online frauds are educated. They include bank professionals, businessmen, salaried class, working women, etc. It is not that educated persons are more gullible as compared to the uneducated lot but cyber criminals convince them in such a way that they easily share OTP or click on the dubious links send by the crooks.

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