New-age crooks are duping people through celebrity game show. Through debit card and `Chehara Pehchano' celebrity fraud, new-age crooks have duped more than 200 persons to the tune of several lakhs of rupees in the first four months of this year.
In 2014, Hyderabad Cyber Crime sleuths had detected 61 debit or credit card frauds, but in the first four months of this year, the number has almost reached 200, with around 50 victims knocking on the doors of CCS every month.
“About 90 per cent of the debit or credit card victims are duped by gangs who call the victims by posing as bank executive or the bank's call centre staff. In the guise of issuing a new card, the fraudster collects entire debit or credit card details including the PIN and CVV number from gullible people and then empty the bank account either through online or retail purchases,“ CCS Cyber Crime inspector VP Tiwari told TOI.
On Friday, 65-year-old Aradhana (name changed) lodged a complaint with the CCS police saying that she received a call a few days ago from a person posing as SBI executive. “The caller said that my debit card is about to expire and asked me to confirm its details to issue a new one. I gave all the details including PIN and CVV number. Within few hours, Rs 19,900 has been paid from my account for various purchases including phone recharges,“ Aradhana said in her complaint.
Police found that the mobile recharging happened from West Bengal and that the caller too was from the same state but other than trying to get money refunded from the banks or money transaction gateways, there is hardly anything cops could do as the caller's number became inactive. In several other cases, fraudsters used the stolen data to make purchases on e-commerce portals like Flipkart.
“Even when we try to track the people who received the products purchased with stolen debit or credit card information, in 90 per cent of the cases, the recipients would either be unavailable at the given address or would only be working for a paltry commission. The kingpin hardly gets caught and the recovery becomes almost impossible,“ the inspector said.
Police also received about five complaints from the customers of Syndicate Bank's Picket branch who withdrew cash from the bank's branch ATM centre. Soon after they carried out the withdrawals, amounts ranging from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2.5 lakh were withdrawn from the bank accounts of the victims without their knowledge. Police found out that the fraudsters attached a skimmer to the ATM's card slot to steal the data of the debit card and PIN was collected with a video camera attached to the ceiling of the ATM centre. The gang member used the stolen data to create cloned debit cards and cash withdrawals were made at ATM centres in Mumbai.
“We strongly advice people to use ATM centres which are manned by security guards and check the card slot and the premises of the ATM for any suspicious additional devices.Never give debit card details to any one as no bank employee needs to ask for them,“ CCS DCP C Ravi Varma told TOI.
Cyber crime sleuths received about 15 complaints this year, mostly from people of Old City saying that they were duped for amounts ranging from Rs 40,000 to Rs 60,000 by organizers of what is being called `Chehra Pehchano' a celebrity photo identification game. The victims who see the partially blurred but easily identifiable Bollywood celebrity like Amitabh Bachchan or Ajay Devgn's photo on popular Hindi music channels would call the telephone numbers given below the photo and identify the celebrity.
The fraudsters who receive the call congratulate the victim and then say that he or she won a Tata Safari vehicle worth Rs 16 lakh and, to claim the same, they would have to pay processing fee, Income Tax and other documentation fee. Once the amount gets debited into the bank accounts given by the accused, it will be withdrawn immediately and the cheat stops answering the victims calls. Police said that the gangs are operating from Bihar and Jharkhand.
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