A businessman from south Delhi lost Rs 50 lakhs to cyber crooks just with multiple missed calls and blank calls

The victim works as the director of security services based in south Delhi. He received several calls between 7 pm and 8:45 pm in fewer than two hours.

The person answered a few, but no one was responding from another side, So he ignored other calls. After some time, when he checked his mobile phone, he was shocked to see messages of Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) instant fund transfer transactions worth nearly half a crore.

The most surprising thing about the incident is the victim didn’t share his OTP or other personal information with the crooks, who heisted the money just through calls. Cops suspect the fraudsters may have used SIM Swap Technique.

What is SIM Swap Technique?

In the case of SIM Swap fraud, the accused buys duplicate SIM cards from telecom operators by saying they have lost them and then accesses the confidential information of victims from the banks.

The fraudsters generally target a loophole in two-factor authentication or two-step verification. For SIM switching, they contact the victim’s mobile phone provider and convince them to activate a SIM card that belongs to them.

Once the fraud SIM is activated, they access all the information and use banking passwords to take the money from the victim’s account. They can also have control over the victim’s phone number by receiving calls or texts.

The crooks can listen to the OTPs on the phone through a parallel call initiated by them during the transaction.

A Delhi police officer said that the masterminds behind this might be based in Jharkhand’s Jamtara; at the same time, the recipients are just the account holders who may be provided their accounts on rent to the scammers for a commission.

According to the report, 12 lakh was transferred to one particular account, while Rs 10 lakh was to another account and Rs 4.6 lakh was transferred to another person’s account.

Check out Rednews wire

Featured image credits: DNA India