Telangana: Fraudsters Use Central Schemes to Dupe People

Hyderabad: Cyberfraudsters have adopted a modus operandi to cheat gullible people using the Central government schemes related to health, loans and employment generation. They call up individuals pretending to be government officials, asking them to enrol for the schemes.

According to a police officer, “Scammers often use tactics such as asking victims to pay some money to access benefits under these government schemes. They ask the victims to download APK files disguised as government apps. Once they run the APK file, it downloads malware which snaps away the data and gains access to WhatsApp, gallery, contacts which lead to privacy violations and financial loss.”

Police officials and cybercrime experts raised alarms about the growing APK file scams and are pressing the public to be cautious when dealing with such calls or messages claiming to provide loans in the name of central government scams.

A recent case filed with the Hyderabad cyber crime police revealed how a victim was duped in the name of a Central government scheme. A victim was lured by a person impersonating a general manager associated with the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) and sanctioned a loan of Rs 5 lakh with a 30 per cent subsidy on the sanctioned amount. He, however, sought money from her for administrative charges, assuring the victim that a cheque will be sent to her residence.

In another case, the accused sent him an APK link seeking an update on bank KYC. An officer suggested that they usually place the bank name of the branch in the link and the sender would also use the bank logo as their display picture.