Hyderabad: Cyber crime officials of the city have warned the online shoppers against entertaining calls from strangers who tell them that they have won a lottery.
According to the city police, at least six cases were reported in the city in the last few weeks wherein people have lost anywhere between Rs 3 lakh to Rs 17 lakh to conmen who are operating from Haryana and Delhi.
“In all the cases, the victims had placed ord-ers with online shopping platforms ‘Shopclues’ and ‘Homehop18’. Wit-hin minutes of placing the order, a stranger calls the customer and says that they have won a Tata Safari. They tell the customer that they can either take the car or Rs 12 lakh cash,” infor-med cyber crime inspector, K.V.M. Prasad.
A man from the Old City lost up to Rs 17 lakh. Someone called him up and said that he had won a Honda Benz car.
“They first collected the processing fee, income tax, GST and against RBI fee etc from him. Another woman lost Rs 5 lakh to the conmen, a senior policeman said.
The police suspect that the conmen are getting the information from the lower rung employees in the call centres and are using it unscrupulously.
“It is highly impossible for any outsider to get the details of those persons who have placed orders with the companies within a few minutes of the orders being placed. Nonetheless, we are serving notices to the companies,” the inspector said.
Mr Haji Akram Ali, a resident of Chandrayangutta who placed an order with Homeshop18, said that within 10 minutes of placing an order for a pair of trousers, a stranger called him up.
“He provided a bank account number and asked me to deposit Rs 7,500 as processing fee for transferring Rs 12 lakh cash. He tried to persuade me to do it. I called up the Homeshop18 management and they said they are receiving similar complaints from across the country,” Mr Ali said.
