Hyderabad: Eight youngsters, ranging from students, a plumber and salesman to a daily wage labourer, have showed that advances in technology and increased use of smartphones has lowered the entry barrier for less technologically proficient cybercriminals. They were not one gang, but operated separately, and using a spoof app easily downloadable from Google Play Store, cheated business enterprises across Kanchanbagh, Chandrayangutta and Mirchowk.
The Hyderabad City Police, who on Wednesday busted the fake e-wallet cheating fraud and arrested eight youngsters in four separate cases, said they were cheating shopkeepers using fake ‘Paytm’ and ‘Google Pay’ applications.
The arrested persons included three students, Mohd Mustafa Hussain Muzakir (20) of Dabeerpura, Hafeez Rana (23) from Mehdipatnam and Mohd Abdul Shahid (22) from Asifnagar apart from a plumber from Syed Nagar, Syed Ilyas (25), a salesman from Asifnagar, Syed Aamir Hassan (24) a labourer from Mahabubnagar, Syed Wajid (26) and two private employees – Mohd Salman (20) from Kalapathar and Mohd Yousuf (18) from Kalapathar.
City Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said the suspects downloaded a fake app called ‘Payatm Spoof’ from Google Play Store and started cheating people. Recently four such cheating cases were reported at Kanchanbagh, Chandrayangutta and Mirchowk areas of the old city.
“They enter a branded store or a shop posing as a customer and purchase some items. At the counter, they ask for the bill and request to pay via e-wallet as they do not carry currency notes,” Anjani Kumar said, adding that after acting as if they were making the payment, they would show the shopkeeper that the amount was paid by holding up the spoof app and decamp with the purchased goods. The victim would realise only later that the payment was not done and that they were cheated.
“They learned about the app through YouTube videos and downloaded the fake app. Following our constant requests, while some such fake apps have been removed from the Google Play Store by the Google management, some apps still continue to be available online,” the Commissioner said.
The Hyderabad Police have urged citizens, particularly traders and shopkeepers, to stay alert about such fake apps and to report any such instances immediately to the police authorities.
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