Hyderabad: Cybercrooks targeted six persons in the first three days of the year in Rachakonda and looted around '6 lakh from their accounts. The victims who fell for the phishing calls from fraudsters immediately approached police who freezed the accounts to which the amount was transferred. In view of growing crimes from phishing calls, police issued alert notification.
Cybercrime police said that the victims included a housewife, a farmer and four private employees. All of them were educated but still could fall prey to the fraudsters so easily.
The fraudsters called the victims posing as bank officials and under the guise of updating the debit or credit card, collected the card number, cvv number and also the one time password from the victims and transferred amount to their accounts.
Police traced the mobile numbers of the fraudsters to Bihar and Jharkhand states, while the accounts the money was transferred to were traced to Bihar and Surat in Gujarat.
“ We have retrieved the amount transferred to the accounts of the fraudsters. On inquiry we found that the gang picks up a random mobile number and contact any person and if there is no response, they changed the mobile number by adding one to the last digit of the first mobile mobile number till they switched to a new number.” Rachakonda Cybercrime Inspector Md Riyazuddin said. The accounts to which the amount was transferred were used for making purchases through cashless payment.
Police on Thursday issued an alert on the phishing calls from Cyber fraudsters and appealed to the public to be cautious about such calls. People are told not to reveal their account details to strangers posing as bank officials. A complaint should be lodged with the police as soon as such a call is received. After themoney has been debited, the police may find it hard to act. Police registered six cases and started inquiry.
