Srinagar, July 28: Jammu and Kashmir police Cyber Cell issued a fresh alert and asked people to be aware to prevent ‘Any Desk’ fraud and should refrain from using apps or dialing fake helpline or customer care numbers found on Google search engine.
A police spokesperson on Tuesday said that on Monday Cyber Police Kashmir Zone received a complaint from an individual resident of border area Uri town of District Baramulla stating that, while trying to cancel an air ticket he lost his entire savings after dialing an Indigo Airlines call centre number that he found while searching on Google and came out to be fake.
He immediately received a back call and was told that the refund amount could be transferred immediately via Google Pay and for this he would have to download a mobile application called ‘AnyDesk’ on his cell phone. On following the directions on phone, all the money in his bank account of an amount of Rs 5,45,000 got debited in minutes.
On the directions of Senior Superintendent (SP) Cyber Police Tahir Ashraf the Financial Fraud Team of Cyber Police Srinagar acted swiftly on this complaint which was received on phone.
The spokesperson further said after strenuous efforts, the cyber police team traced out the UPI transaction details which were made by the fraudsters in 14 different transactions amounting to Rs 5,45,000. The fraudsters transferred the amount through CC Avenue and PayTm Gateways that was further settled to one US based Company Melot Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Matter was taken up with the said merchant about these fraudulent transactions and were successfully made to block the transactions for further use. Thereby entire amount of Rs 5,45,000 was recovered and refund process initiated to the complainant source account.
He stated that Cyber Police Kashmir have received a similar complaint wherein one complainant was duped of Rs 2997 when he was looking for a customer care number as his Refrigerator got faulty and was made to download the same ‘Any Desk’ App on his cell phone. The genuine customer fraudulently lost an amount of Rs 2997 from his bank account. While taking immediate measures Cyber Police successfully traced and refunded the partial amount to the complainants source account.
There have been several such cases over the past few months wherein the fake customer care representatives ask for the customer bank details on the pretext of helping them or they even share the link of an application which customers are asked to download on their phones to get the refund. These scams happen when the victim opens an online banking app or UPI app on their phones to do a transaction, without knowing that someone is watching through AnyDesk.
General public is advised that AnyDesk application is a remote access desktop software tool which provides a third party control of the user’s device. People should refrain from using such apps or dialing fake helpline or customer care numbers found on Google search engine.
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