Around 306 cases have surfaced; fraud exploits buyer and seller relationship to steal data and extract money
Mona Markar, a 45-year-old homemaker who is a resident of Bhakti Park area of Wadala east, had recently ordered a saree for herself by placing an order on avkcart.com. The order whose payment was to be done by cash on delivery reached Markar a few days later and it then turned out to be a defective piece. To get the refund, Markar tried to reach out to the customer care executives at info@avkcart.com but failed to get a response. After surfing on Google, she contacted an unknown random customer care number who asked her to download the Google Pay application to get the refund after clicking the link sent on her number. The saree which was worth Rs 1,500 turned out to be a loss of Rs 1 lakh for Markar just by clicking the link which claimed to immediately refund the money.
Cyber experts have called such incidents as 'e-wallet skimming frauds' and fake customer care cyber frauds whose numbers are on the rise and are currently ruling the charts of all cybercrimes known till date. According to the Maharashtra Cyber Cell officials, e-wallet skimming frauds are those cheating games which usually happens between a buyer and seller who encounter each other under the pretext of making a deal.
Speaking more about the modus operandi of this trending cyber fraud, Superintendent of Police, Maharashtra Cyber Cell, Balsingh Rajput told DNA, "If a person is posting an advertisement of his product on OLX to sell it, the fraudsters notices it and contacts the buyer and shows interest to purchase it. Over the phone, the unknown buyer shall ask the seller to download a particular e-wallet application and accept the request which he shall send from the other end. After getting the details of QR code and reference number of the buyer, the sender sends a link which asks for approval and once it is clicked, messages of money withdrawal from the buyer's e-wallet and bank account start dropping in and the fraud gets executed,"
As the fraudster keeps the buyer engaged in a telephonic conversation, the victims after clicking on the link fail to see what happens next and by the time they realise about the fraud, it's already late.
Cyber Expert Ritesh Bhatia said that the link sent to the victim performs a reverse action where instead of receiving, the victim loses the money.
Bhatia said, "Most of the e-wallets are linked with credit/debit cards or bank accounts so once the miscreants get access to the account, it a piece of cake for him to get away with the money without the victim knowing about it."
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Cyber experts have called such incidents as 'e-wallet skimming frauds' and fake customer care cyber frauds whose numbers are on the rise and are currently ruling the charts of all cybercrimes known till date. According to the Maharashtra Cyber Cell officials, e-wallet skimming frauds are those cheating games which usually happens between a buyer and seller who encounter each other under the pretext of making a deal.
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