A 43-year-old woman in Bengaluru lost Rs 1 lakh to a cybercrook who pretended to be her father’s friend. The accused allegedly siphoned off the money from her account on the pretext of sending money to her digital payment application without using any OTP or malicious links.
The incident took place between 4:45 to 5:00 pm when the victim, who is a teacher was driving home from work. She received a call from an unknown number and the caller claimed to be her father’s friend, a chartered accountant.
The accused said her father wanted to send her some money and asked for his help for which he asked for her UPI ID. Since she didn’t think anything wrong in sharing just the UPI ID, she did so.
Later, rather than using conventional methods like phishing links or OTP requests, the fraudster used a more insidious approach. He sent her a seemingly ordinary message on PhonePe, the scammer prompted her to check for the amount following his instructions.
Shockingly, within just 15 minutes Rs 25,000 was deducted twice followed by a deduction of Rs 50,000. Throughout the fraudster addressed her as “beta” (daughter in Hindi) a tactic to establish a false sense of familiarity.
Cybercrime experts said the text messages are encrypted with a code that allows money theft.
As soon as she noticed that money was deducted from her account nonstop, the victim rushed to the nearest police station only to find that the authorities were preoccupied with the chief minister’s security arrangement.
“They couldn’t even understand what I was trying to say. None in the police station could understand Hindi or English and I can’t speak Kannada. In a metropolitan city like Bengaluru, I didn’t expect this. I had to then call my brother and hand over the phone to the policeman to explain my plight and register a complaint. If the police had only paid heed to my agony and taken actions swiftly, we probably could have been successful in tracing him or freezing his account” said the victim.
What makes this case particularly alarming is the absence of the typical red flags associated with cyber fraud such as malicious links, OTP requests, or any sort of text messages.
This incident underscores the evolving nature of cyber fraud, where criminals exploit text messages encrypted with codes that facilitate unauthorized access
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