After two Gurugram residents were duped of nearly Rs 2 crore by cyber fraudsters, a Chennai-based marketing professional on Tuesday said she received a similar scam call claiming her Aadhaar number was being used to send drugs to Thailand.
In a series of posts on
Two weeks ago there was news that a man from Gurgaon lost 56 Lakhs to a scammer and another lost 1.3 Crores. I got the same call today.
A FedEx customer service representative will call you and say that your Aadhar card is being misused to send packages containing medicines to Thailand.
— Lavanya Mohan (@lavsmohan) March 5, 2024
“Two weeks ago there was news that a man from Gurgaon lost 56 Lakhs to a scammer and another lost 1.3 Crores. I received the same call today. A FedEx customer service representative will call you and say that your Aadhar card is being abused to send packages containing drugs to Thailand,” she wrote.
To make it sound like a legitimate concern, the caller also gave her fake package details, an FIR number and also their own FedEx employee ID. The caller then offered to connect her to a customs agent to resolve the issue.
“Madam, if you do not proceed with the complaint, your Aadhar will continue to be misused, so let me immediately transfer you to the cybercrime branch.” Threatening consequences + urgency = scam,” she wrote.
Ms Mohan said the caller even warned her about “emerging scams” and offered to urgently help her with the problem by contacting the police.
'What is worrying is the level of detail he had to provide to me. The modus operandi is that they put you in touch with the police, who then claim that your ID is linked to the underworld. People are losing their hard earned money and can't do that. is being blamed because these scams are becoming more sophisticated,” she said.
Ms Mohan warned against falling for such “sophisticated” threats, saying it is highly unlikely that a delivery service will contact you about a serious issue like this. She added that if your ID is misused, police will likely visit you personally to inform you.
“Anyway, I told the scammer I would wait for the police to contact me and disconnect the call,” she said.
Anyway, I told the scammer that I would wait for the police to contact me and disconnect the call. Here are some more ways you can protect yourself: https://t.co/UVkkiV3Gkg
— Lavanya Mohan (@lavsmohan) March 5, 2024
Similar cyber fraud that uses highly detailed information to appear genuine has been widely reported across the country in recent months.
In February, Gurugram resident Debraj Mitra received a similar call informing him that a package containing passports, credit cards, drugs and laptops linked to the “Mumbai underworld” had been sent to Mumbai from Taiwan using his Aadhaar -facts.
Callers, posing as Mumbai Crime Branch officials, contacted him via Skype and had him transfer all his money to a bank account for “monitoring”. Before realizing that he was being scammed, Mr. Mitra had transferred a total amount of ₹56,70,000 to the bank account shared by the fraudsters.