Confirm your order for food and empty your bank account

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: Each year the number of cyber crimes reported across the country continues to increase at a significant pace.

More than 10.10 lakh incidents for financial fraud have been registered on the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) this year between January and November 30.

In a recent incident, a sales executive at an automobile firm in Bengaluru, lost Rs 38,000 from his loan application account after receiving an automated call that claimed to be from Swiggy.

The victim, Chennakeshava KS, said that he received a call around 11:39 am, claiming a Swiggy order of Rs 5,345 had been placed on his name.

The voice message prompted him to press 1 if he had not made the purchase, or press 2 to confirm the order. As he had not ordered anything, he pressed 1 on his mobile phone.

Further the victim received a request to input a One Time Password (OTP) for account verification, which he complied.

"After I typed a six-digit OTP during the call, the voice message said that my account was verified and it is safe now," the victim said.

Shockingly, his mobile phone started getting flooded with hundreds and thousands of messages containing OTP numbers along with hundreds of unidentified missed calls until he decided to log out of his Swiggy account.

The victim further found that Rs 38,720 had been deducted from LazyPay, a loan application account on his mobile phone.

He also found that his account from Swiggy had been deleted and no previous data related to his activities was found in the application. An FIR was filed with the cybercrime police and an investigation is underway.

The matter was also reported to both Swiggy and LazyPay. However, they are yet to respond to the issue. Earlier, a woman in the city had lost Rs 25,000 in a similar scam.

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) Yeshwanth Kumar, Karnataka Cybercrime, said, "The cybercriminals are now becoming more sophisticated in their attacks, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and existing ransomware code to drill deeper into victims' systems and extract information."