The Latest Con Technique
A man was duped of Rs 1.86 crores through SIM swapping; the latest con technique used for cheating mobile phone users. The businessman from Mumbai received 6 missed calls on his phone at 2 AM. One of the calls had UK’s dialing code (+44). He tried to call back the number in the morning and this when he found out that his SIM was deactivated. He immediately checked with his mobile service provider that informed that SIM was deactivated upon his request only. This raised an alarm in his mind because he had not asked for deactivation of his SIM. He almost immediately visited his bank branch and learned that Rs 1.86 crore was transferred to 14 accounts through 28 transactions across the country. Upon investigating, bank could only trace and retrieve Rs 20 lakhs, but the rest amount was gone.
The SIM replacement request was filed with the company at 11.15 pm on December 27 and the missed calls came at 2 am on December 28.
The Course of Action
“My company’s bank account is linked to my mobile phone, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the cheats will empty my account with such ease,” Shah said.
An FIR was filed in the BKC Cyber Crime Police Station. “We suspect the scamsters had access to Shah’s unique SIM number and had initiated a SIM swap. To ensure he doesn’t suspect anything, they called him late in the night when his phone was on silent mode,” a police officer told the paper.
The unique SIM number was obtained by the conmen through hacking, as Shah is sure he didn’t share this number with anyone, neither did anyone call him asking for that information.
“Even when you open a fake version of your bank website, your details are automatically compromised. Scamsters access your data every time you access unsecured web connections. We suspect Shah may have accessed one such email or app,” the officer added.
This incidence definitely brings our notice to the fact that how risky it can be to receive unknown calls on our mobile phone. Also, it is imperative to use net banking only on a secured network.
