Hyderabad: Cyber Criminals impersonating members of the National Security Guard (NSG), the country’s elite commando force involved in counter terrorism, have duped a city based techie to the tune of over Rs 2 lakh.
On the pretext of hunting for a flat on rent, the criminals approached the victim and citing Armed Forces Service rules, made the victim add their bank account as payee account in his bank account and then siphoned off money from his account.
In a similar case, a 41-year-old man working in the service sector was duped by imposters impersonating Army officials looking for rented houses and looted huge amounts from the former.
The techie, a resident of Gachibowli, uploaded details of his flat in the app of a rental service provider for rent. A day later, he received a call from an unknown person, who identified himself as a Naib Subedar working with the NSG and was interested in the flat as he would be shifting to Hyderabad soon.
He also shared his identity proofs and other documents to the techie for verification, but when the techie made a video call to the ‘NSG Commando’ to check further, the fraudster rejected the call saying that he was on duty and cannot attend the call as he is posted in a vital installation.
Later, the techie got another call from a person identifying himself as accounts officer Captain Rajendra Singh Shekhawat and he confirmed the commando’s details to the techie. Later, they asked the techie to transfer him the rental advance amount which actually they are supposed to pay him.
They convinced him saying that it’s army procedure to transfer back double the amount automatically based on a command control system for civilians on behalf of whoever works in the army. Believing them, the techie first transferred Rs 5 and then Rs 46,000.
Citing his transactions were incorrect, he made him transfer more amounts, till he transferred Rs 2,41,990 and finally told that the army account got blocked due to the incorrect transactions made by the techie and stopped responding to his calls.
In the second case, the fraudster claiming to be an officer in the Indian Army at Dehradun, approached the complainant who had put his flat for rent in a portal. Citing army service rules, they made him transfer amounts totalling Rs 2,69,995.
Cybercrime officials said that crooks are now using pictures of armed forces personnel and reaching out to people to loot them. “People are advised to not proceed with any financial transactions without the interested parties visit the sites on rent,” they said.
