Courier Scam: In June this year, a software engineer and his wife, a faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru, fell prey to a cyber fraud featuring fake policemen and a fake courier service. The software engineer reported the loss of Rs 33.24 lakh while the IIMB faculty member reported the loss of Rs 1.73 lakh.
The software engineer, 39, filed a complaint on June 29 with the Bengaluru police stating that he received calls from a person claiming to be with the FedEx courier service to state that a parcel sent in his name to Taiwan had been seized by the Mumbai police for containing illegal items. The phone call was subsequently transferred to a person impersonating a Mumbai deputy commissioner of police who claimed that a money laundering case had been registered against the techie.
The techie was asked to join a Skype call with the ‘DCP’ and was told to transfer funds to various accounts with his Aadhaar number and photos in order to verify his credentials. The ‘DCP’ who threatened dire consequences claimed that the money deposited in various accounts would be transferred back to the techie after verifications. A total amount of Rs 33,24,859 was transferred.
In the wake of a deluge of cybercrimes being reported in Bengaluru, the city police have decided to categorise cybercrimes under four specific groups with four officers of the rank of deputy commissioner of police designated to supervise the crimes in each category.
As many as 250 cases involving fake courier fraud have been reported in Bengaluru this year. The Bengaluru police announced last week that the investigation of these cases along with three other types of common cyber fraud – Aadhaar Enabled Payment Services fraud (116 cases), WhatsApp sextortion (115 cases), and online job fraud (4,607 cases) – would be prioritized for investigations.
The DCP North-East will head the team investigating the AEPS frauds, the DCP Traffic East will head the team probing the FedEx courier frauds, the DCP Traffic North will supervise the probes into cases of sextortion and the DCP Traffic South will supervise investigations of online job frauds, the Bengaluru police commissioner said Friday.
“The designated DCPs must ensure that the cybercrimes in their supervision are probed properly and must coordinate with the nodal officers in banks and the central government’s Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to find cyber criminals and recover funds lost by victims,” Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayananda said.
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