Actress-turned-politician Nagma is the latest victim of a KYC fraud case. The 48-year-old lost almost Rs 1 lakh to cyber scammers after she clicked a link sent to her cellphone. The link later turned out to be a hoax. As per a report in The Times of India, a huge sum of Rs 99,998 was extorted from the Yalgaar actress’ bank account on February 28.
According to the Mumbai Police, there have been 78 FIR complaints by customers who claimed that about 300 fake bank accounts were created with the purchase of about 100 SIM cards. Online fraudsters scammed the victims by misleading them into updating their KYC requirements for PAN cards and churning out all their details.
In an interaction with the Times of India, Nagma shared that she clicked the link since she did not receive the message from a private number. She said, “I believed the message as it resembled those sent by the bank and it was not from a private number. The fraud occurred at night when I clicked on the link. I immediately got a call from a person claiming to be from the bank.”
Elaborating on the unfortunate incident Nagma added, “He told me he would guide me to complete the KYC update. The fraudster gained remote access to my phone. Though I did not share any details on the link, the fraudster created a beneficiary account after logging into my internet banking and transferred Rs 1 lakh to a nationalised bank.”
Nagma further revealed that she received numerous one-time passwords (OTPs) that showed the scammers making as many as 20 attempts to extract money. Not only Nagma but another actress, Shweta Menon, also claimed that she lost Rs 57,636.
TOI further reports that the cyber police believe an organized crime group is responsible for the increase in fraudulent transactions as well as a major consumer data breach at a bank’s third-party agency. The victims lost a total of Rs 92 lakh between February 21 and March 6. Additionally, out of 93 police stations, 34 of them, including 5 cyber police stations reported cases of rapidly expanding fraud.
Joint Commissioner of Police Lakhmi Gautam from the crime branch described how fraudsters operate by sending fraudulent text messages to clients that contain phishing links. They cause alarm amongst the consumers, stating that if the account holders fail to update their KYC, their bank accounts would get blocked. Students, elderly people, labourers, media professionals, BMC employees, doctors, psychiatrists, engineers, and merchants, are among the numerous victims of this KYC fraud.
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