Fraudsters steal INR 1.86 Crore through SIM Swapping from Mumbai Businessman

As per the report by Mumbai Mirror, a whopping amount of INR 1.86 Crore was robbed off from a Mumbai-based businessman on intervening night of December 27-December 28, 2018, by the fraudsters. The Mahim-based businessman and victim, V. Shah, was conned through SIM swapping, latest con method, used by the fraudsters.

On intervening night of December 27-December 28, 2018, Mr. Shah has received 6 missed calls on mobile phone from two different numbers. One of the numbers showed United Kingdom's dialing code (i.e. +44). In the morning of December 28, 2018, Mr. Shah after seeing the missed calls, tried to call back the numbers. However, to his surprise, he found that his SIM card was deactivated. Immediately the victim enquired with his mobile service provider, who informed him that a request was generated by him for new SIM and thus they blocked this SIM. The mobile service provider further informed to Shah that they received the SIM replacement request at around 11:15 p.m. of December 27, 2018, and the missed calls that he received came at 2:00 a.m. of December 28, 2018.

As Mr. Shah have not made any such request, so the businessman doubted that he might have been cheated by the fraudsters and went straight to his bank. To his dismay, he found INR 1.86 Crore stolen from his company's bank account. The money has been transferred to accounts of many banks all over India through 28 transactions. The banks where the money has been transferred are in West Bengal, Delhi, Jharkhand and some other northern states. The bank tried to retrieve the money. But they were only able to retrieve INR 20 lakh, as rest of the amount was withdrawn from all the banks by then.

The BKC Cyber Crime Police Station filed an FIR for the case based on complaint of Mr. Shah. One of the police officer of BKC Cyber Crime Police Station said that "we suspect the scamsters had access to Shah's unique SIM number and had initiated a SIM swap. To ensure he doesn't suspect anything, they called him late in the night when his phone was on silent mode". An offence has been lodged by the Cyber Police Station against unknown people under IPC sections 419, 420, 43, 34, and 66D.

The conmen in this case might have obtained his unique SIM number through hacking. The police officer added that, "even when you open a fake version of your bank website, your details are automatically compromised. Your data is accessed by scamsters every time you access unsecured web connections. We suspect Shah may have accessed one such email or app".

» SPAMfighter News - 1/16/2019