A Mumbai woman was defrauded of Rs 11 lakh in e-SIM fraud within a few minutes. The cyber thugs, pretending to be employees of a telecom company, tricked them into upgrading their SIM, obtained the OTP and activated the victim’s number through e-SIM on their device. After this the banking OTP reached him and the money was transferred from the account.
New method of fraud, first network disappears, then money
In this case, the woman first received a call, then within some time her mobile network went out and by then Rs 11 lakh had been withdrawn from the bank account.
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How does this game work?
See, the way the fraudsters work is very clever, which is called SIM swapping or e-SIM fraud. First, fraudsters call you posing as customer care officers of Jio, Airtel or Voda. They scare you that your old SIM is about to shut down or you have to switch to e-SIM for better 5G speeds. Then once you agree, they email you a QR code or ask you to click on a suspicious link. As soon as you click, your physical SIM gets deactivated and your number becomes active as an e-SIM on the criminal’s phone.
Clean Sweep: Now all the OTP, UPI PIN and credit card information of your bank reaches the fraudsters. By the time you file a complaint about missing network, the account is already empty.
