Hyderabad: Cyber Crimes Wing Cyberabad has advised people to be wary of ‘army men’ on OLX, Quikr and other online websites. The Twitter handle of the same on Saturday cautioned individuals and said, ”people posing as army men are duping buyers across India on OLX and other websites.”
The fraudsters generally posing as army or paramilitary personnel, contact the person who is trying to sell a product on OLX, Quikr or other websites. Once both the parties lock a deal on to a certain price, the fraudster claims that he/she is posted in some inaccessible area of the country and hence, can neither come to take the physical delivery nor can they pay the money in cash. They gain the trust of the buyer by cashing in on some non-existent army identity and insist that the seller send money via UPI.
Now, the fraudsters send a fake screenshot to the seller purporting to show that a transaction has been made to the seller’s account. The fraudster then brings out his/her last card of the play and guides the victim through the process by sending a QR code, which they claim can be used for receiving the money. The victim falls for it, scans the QR code and enters the UPI Pin to pay the amount rather than receiving it.
The frightened victim asks the fraudster to refund the amount. This is the part where the fraudster gets another chance of getting more money out of the victim’s pockets. He/she claims that this was a mistake and that now he is sending a QR code for twice the amount to account for the money that has been mistakenly debited from the victim’s account.
If the victim falls for it again, the fraudster ends up making thrice the money. These fraudsters repeat this exercise as many times as they can without getting caught.
This way, the victim ends up losing thousands or even lakhs of rupees while trying to sell a product online on OLX, Quikr and other websites. Considering the number of individuals falling prey, Cyber Crimes Wing Cyberabad posted a cautionary tweet and asked the people to beware while accessing any online website.
Earlier, the Economic Offences Wing Cyberabad has also advised people to be wary of ‘online data entry job’ offers.
