Cyber crooks looted Rs 50 lakhs over missed call from a Business Director of Delhi.

A group of cyber criminals allegedly looted around Rs 50 lakh from the director of a security services firm through missed calls and fraudulent bank transactions. As per preliminary investigation done by cyber police the fraudsters are suspected to be from Jamtara area of Jharkhand. 

Reportedly the director of a security services firm from Delhi received repeated missed calls on October 10 somewhere between 7 PM-8:44 PM. He took some of the calls and left the rest. Soon after attending such calls the director received multiple messages of RTGS transactions worthy of nearly Rs 50 lakh from the bank. 

As per reports multiple RTGS transactions worth over Rs 50 lakh were carried out by the cyber criminals from current account of the director’s company. Notably the crooks didn’t ask any kind of one-time password (OTP). Although the most common kind of frauds is conducted through OTPs, this gang managed to commit the entire crime through missed calls.

Reports project that the recipients might not be the actual crooks but just account holders whose accounts are just rented by the cyber crooks. Police officials suspect the crooks may have done ‘SIM swap’ and they might have initiated RTGS transfer and facilitated OTP over the phone. Possibly they could have overheard the OTP through a parallel call while being mentioned via IVR.

Fraudsters can access the customer’s Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card or may get a duplicate SIM card (including electronic-SIM) for the registered mobile number connected to the customer’s bank account then they could easily receive OTP on such duplicate SIM that could be used to conduct unauthorised transactions. Generally cyber criminals gain the personal / identity details from the customer by calling them as fake telephone / mobile network staff. 

Few precautions can save someone from such frauds like avoid sharing SIM card related identity credentials and being careful about network access of the phone. In case of absence of mobile network in the phone the owner of the SIM should instantly contact the mobile operator to confirm that no duplicate SIM has been issued by the same number.