Representative image showing a cybercriminal
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In an emerging trend, cybercriminals posing as police and courier officials held a 26-year-old Bengalurean under duress for over six hours, did not allow him to eat and forced him to take a pre-approved loan of over Rs 18 lakh.
Senior police officers say that this trend of exploiting the pre-approved loan feature has risen in the past several months and urged the public to remain vigilant.
In this case, Vinay R (name changed), a resident of Kodihalli, received a phone call at noon on November 7 from people impersonating as FedEx executives. The caller, Prem Singh, told Vinay that a package containing four expired passports, one laptop, three kg of clothes and 450 grams of banned MDMA was booked from Mumbai to Iran using his details, including the phone number and Aadhaar card.
When Vinay denied it, Singh sought a Police Clearance Certificate (PCC) and directed the call to the “cybercrime helpline”. The call was later directed to the ‘Mumbai police department’ where the caller asked him to go to a private room and connect over Skype. cybercriminal
Here, a cybercriminal dressed as a cop began “interrogating” Vinay and asked him to show his Aadhaar card on the video. Vinay was told that his Aadhaar card was found in over 20 cases of money laundering and there was involvement of bank managers and officials. Vinay and his family were threatened with over five years of jail time.
“They wanted to know my bank details and bank statements to suspect any illegal transfers,” Vinay told the police. He was then asked to log in to a mobile banking app and share the screen “for monitoring”. Since the bank app restricted screenshots or screen sharing, Vinay was asked to share his debit card photo, which he did while hiding the CVV.
“I was asked to go to the pre-approval loan section. I was told these offers were all part of money laundering activities and if I claimed it, the culprit would be revealed,” Vinay alleged.
Once Vinay clicked on the avail option, Rs 18.6 lakh was instantly credited to his bank account. The scamsters forced him to wire the sum while keeping him under the impression that he was being interrogated. “All this happened at lunchtime around 2 pm. When I sought time to eat, I wasn’t permitted, saying RBI verification was underway,” Vinay claimed.
Once the transfer was complete, Vinay was told he would be issued a clearance certificate in the next 20 minutes. When there was no response, he realised he was scammed and approached the police. A case was registered on November 9 and a probe has been initiated.