Ebay.in used to cheat customers

Hyderabad: Gangs of cybercriminals have found a new way to cheat the public – by offering customers of eBay.in expensive gifts such as iPhones, refrigerators, and laptops. One such gang even tried to dupe a correspondent of this newspaper.

The fraudsters have set up call centres, from where they make calls to customers of eBay.in. They quote details of recent purchases made by the customers and say that they have been chosen as winners of a lucky draw, as part of which they will receive speci-al gifts. The telecallers tell customers that th-ey must purchase pro-ducts worth '4,000 from the website in order to be able to claim the gift.

While trying to lure a correspondent of this paper into falling for this fraudulent scheme, telecaller Priya said, “Just select two or three products worth Rs 4,000 and give us the details, we will merge the order along with one of the gifts.” She went on to say that there was no need to check-out the products on eBay and that there would be no additional shipping charges.

Once a customer selects products worth Rs 4,000 or more, he is asked to make online payment to avail Rs 1,000 cashback. In case he opts for card payment, the fraudsters ask for his card details, including the CVV number and the PIN number.

While speaking with telecallers from the gang’s call centre, this newspaper’s correspondent could hear other telecallers talking to people in various Indi-an languages. This in-dicates that the gang is targeting customers fr-om across the country.

This correspondent decided to verify the authenticity of the scheme by calling eBay customer care department, and he was told that he had been contacted by frau-dsters. He shared with the representatives of eBay the phone numbers from which he received calls and ask-ed them to lodge a complaint against the gang.

V. Rammohan, the Superintendent of the Cyber Crime Wing of the CID, told this paper that the department would look into the fraud. “We monitor the locations of towers fr-om which the calls by the gang’s phone numbers are made, and the bank details shared by them and pass on the information to concerned state police and ask them to freeze the account in order to protect the victims,” he said.