HYDERABAD:  It seems that cyber fraudsters are moving on from their usual methods of duping netizens — through phishing calls, spam emails, text messages and social media alerts — to, a rather, old-school modus operandi, via post. These scammers, reportedly, send out postal letters to their targets containing ‘scratch cards’ worth ‘millions’ as prize money. 

Letters like these were delivered to several victims across the country. One such victim of the fraud hailed from Bengaluru. The letter addressed to her was allegedly sent out with the masthead of a leading e-commerce portal and contained a scratch card and a ‘certificate of achievement’ worth Rs 1 lakh. 

When she contacted the customer case number provided in the letter to claim the amount, she was asked to pay a separate amount as ‘taxes’.

Consequently, she shelled out more than Rs 1 lakh to the fraudsters before realising that she was being duped. Experts warned customers of this novel form of cheating and urged them to verify the credentials mentioned in the letter and make sure that they were genuine before taking the claims mentioned in it forward. 

“Many such incidents go unnoticed as the victims do not approach the police. We request victims to approach their respective Cyber Crime wings so that the fraudsters are prevented from further looting innocent people,” says IL Narasimha Rao, project manager, Information Security Education & Awareness (ISEA), Hyderabad.

In the aforementioned incident, the letter claimed that a few customers had been chosen randomly as winners of a lucky-draw contest conducted on the occasion of the ‘company’s’ anniversary celebrations. 

To make the claim sound more genuine, the letter also read that the draw was part of an internal initiative of the company meant for promotion purposes and that the prize could only be redeemed via the helpline number mentioned in it and not through the company’s customer care number. “Please do not call the customer care number of the company. It is only meant for taking orders and providing post-sales support,” the letter read.

The victim found out that she had ‘won’ Rs 10 lakh after scratching the card and called the helpline number to claim the same. Later, she was asked to pay GST and other taxes before she could claim the prize money. It was after she paid Rs 1 lakh as supposed taxes and when they demanded more money that she realised that she was being cheated.