Fraudsters trying to dupe people online are no longer depending on OTP frauds or threats that the ATM or SIM card of the targets would be blocked.
They have moved to the next level where they can impersonate anyone — be it an electricity department official, an LPG dealer or even someone known to the target, police said.
The city police have received various types of complaints in the past few weeks, many of which had prompted officers to issue advisories to make people aware of the new ways of fraudsters.
“The fraudsters are coming up with new ideas to dupe people. As there is now a lot of awareness about OTP frauds, and people usually get an alert the moment someone asks for the OTP, fraudsters have shifted to other modus operandi,” said an officer at Lalbazar.
Last month, a couple in Lake Gardens had allegedly received a lesser quantity of liquor than what they had ordered from a store in Alipore through a food aggregator. When they confronted the delivery executive, he allegedly gave them a phone number which he said was of the liquor store.
“When my husband called up the number, they convinced him to share his card details saying they would send him a refund for the bottles they could not send,” the wife said.
However, immediately after sharing the card details, the couple sensed trouble and got the card blocked.
Later, they received text messages that there was a failed attempt to withdraw Rs 91,998 from the account, which could not be completed as the card had been blocked.
“We were shocked to know that the delivery executive gave us the number of a fraudster,” the woman said.
The Telegraph reported on Tuesday that an official in the state housing department received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number with a profile picture that matched that of an IAS officer in the same department.
The alleged imposter, pretending to be his senior in the department, asked the official to transfer money in a friend’s account. The official got in touch with the IAS officer and learnt that he had not sent the message.
Another relatively new mode of cheating people is to ask them to scan a fraudulent QR code, an officer at Lalbazar said.
Police have received a number of complaints about QR code frauds. One such complaint was lodged by a couple with Gariahat police station in February.
The couple, who had recently shifted to an apartment on Garcha Road, allegedly lost
Rs 42,635 to cheats who had asked them to scan a QR code to get an LPG cylinder connection.
They tried calling an LPG dealer at Dover Terrace whose landline number they found on the internet. But there was no response.
“When I couldn’t get through to the landline number, I dialled the mobile number I found on the same web page, which was answered. In good faith I scanned the QR code they sent me to get a connection,” said complainant Arik Banerjee.
Several Calcuttans The Telegraph spoke to said they had received text messages asking them to pay their electricity bills to prevent disruption of their power supply. A mobile number is given in the text message where people are being asked to call to pay the bill.
“This is a fraudulent message and people should ignore it. Under no circumstances should people call the numbers mentioned in such text messages,” said an officer of the cyber police station at Lalbazar.
The city police had issued an alert against such fraudulent messages a few weeks ago.