Fraudsters dupe women posing as crime branch officials

BENGALURU: Cybercriminals seem to have found a new way to target women and pensioners and cheat them of their hard-earned money. In a recent case, a gang duped a woman in the city posing as crime branch officials.

The fraudsters first send some money, like Rs 1,000 or Rs 2,000, through Google Pay, Phone Pay to their targets. After about half an hour, they will call the woman and say that she got the money by mistake and then request her to send it back.

If the women are late in returning the money, the fraudsters call them after two hours claiming to be crime branch officials and claim that they are tracing their mobile phone number claiming that several complaints have been received by mail. The fraudster says that he just called to inform her about the matter to the woman believe that it is the police and she agrees to return the money. They dupe the women by sending QR codes and getting money from them.

Two days ago, a woman named Anitha of Govindaraj Nagar was cheated in similar fashion. Anita’s phone call records revealed the modus operandi of the fraudsters.

The fraudsters called Anita posing as crime branch officials, and when she asked how they got her number, they said there have been many complaints about her and had traced her phone number. When Anitha asked if she should return the money, the fraudster said it was not a big deal and that she could return the money any time. When she was about to return, they immediately stopped her and asked her to send the money through a QR code which they would send, and made her believe that only then they would be able to take action against the sender.

An unknown person had sent Rs 1,800 to Anitha and she returned Rs 2,000. The fraudsters threatened her saying this is the 84th case against her and one of them had introduced himself as the Head Constable in the crime branch in Peenya. The woman was trapped, and she finally agreed to send Rs 2,000 through the QR scanner.