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Financial Frauds are becoming more and more common with each passing day. Over the last year and a half three people in my extended circle have fallen victim to such frauds, and the unfortunate part is that all of these were highly educated working/ retired professionals who trusted some unknown people and gave out some information/ joined some unknown WhatsApp group and transacted or simply dialed a number which was prefixed and suffixed with “#”, leading to call and message forwarding.

As a person in the finance industry, I thought of writing this long message describing what had happened in the above cases and what else is happening to lure you into these traps.

The first case a retired official with a reasonable bank balance (savings account), received a call from X bank of India, the person suggested him that he should convert his idle savings account balance into an FD and get 7.75% returns instead of 2.75%. The customer agreed and since the voice on the phone was Supposedly of branch head of the bank, this customer shared OTP to make deposit, and the money simply vanished, 40 lakhs lost, money circulated in 4-5 banks before being withdrawn in cash. A year and a half down the line, no trace of the same.

Second case, this is of a client’s brother, who was advised to invest into mutual funds by the client through us, but since we spoke of 12-15% CAGR returns over a long term, the brother did not come to us and joined a WhatsApp group on investments promising about 40-50% annual returns, link received from Instagram. Over a period of 4 months the client willingly invested approx. 70 lakhs (sale proceeds of a property) just to realize last in June that he has been duped and kicked out of the WhatsApp group which was seemingly run from Columbia. While he lost all his capital the sister has received returns of approx. 40% CAGR in this period from her Mutual Fund portfolio.        

The third case, a senior executive from a software company got a call for a courier delivery, as she was in the rush of getting into a meeting, she asked the courier company person to leave the package at the door of her house. The executive asked her to call the delivery person directly with the instructions and shared a number, when the number did not connect, she was told to add a code “#21 (phone number) #” to be able to connect. She did so and went into the meeting. Her number got hacked, calls and texts got transferred, and her contacts got a message that she is in urgent need of money and some friends transferred money to her based on the message, which obviously went to the hacker’s account.

Apart from these successful ones there are a lot of unsuccessful attempts that have happened with me or my close associates and friends common among these are

Call from courier company FedEx normally stating that your pan and Aadhaar has been used to send product abroad which has been held by customs department as it had illegal substance (drugs) and you need to pay to get the help of advocate to stop your arrest warrant.

Call from Mumbai high court/ Delhi Tis hazari court with similar narrative, just to create the extra fear of the call coming from the court and putting additional pressure.

Various WhatsApp groups just adding you and giving finance tips. Initially free and then asking for a fee after few tips make good money

Voice clone calls, where in you get a call from your near and dear ones stating that they have been arrested, involved in accident, fight at a pub, and now they need bail money to avoid going to jail. A different version of this is where the attorney calls you on behalf of a relative under custody asking to pay court fee for bail etc.

One case was of a job offer, where in all you have to do is like some videos and share screenshots of your liking the video/ post, and you can get paid upto Rs 3,000-10,000 per day. The condition is that the links would be sent to your WhatsApp to like the post. Once you click the link a malware is installed and all your messages then get forwarded to hacker’s and OTP’s is what they need to do what they want to do.

Another case that came across is of students being offered internships by some companies which then would bring in clients to trade in stock market/ crypto/ commodities, through their platform, after a month the internship will be over and the platform too will vanish, stop responding.

To conclude the best way to safeguard yourself from such frauds is by being aware of small things, something as simple as not clicking on untrusted links, not joining any unknown groups, not taking investment advice from unknown people, not investing through a link that is insecure, and last but not the least not sharing OTP with anyone.

If you have come across any other type of such attempts at fraud, please share the details so that we can inform more people to be aware. Feel free to reach me at raghupreet@brightwealthideas.com or WhatsApp at 9876738803.

Connect with me at https://wa.me/9876738803,