Cybercriminals impersonate magazines, food delivery apps | Mumbai news

Mumbai: Cybercriminals continue to adopt new methods to dupe people. In two such cases reported at Malabar Hill police station on Saturday, scamsters replaced the contact numbers

of popular establishments— a women’s magazine and a food delivery portal—with their own numbers to dupe victims. In the first instance that occurred at around 11am on Friday,

Amisha Kanoriya, 39, a writer, looked online for a contact number for the Women’s Era magazine as she wanted to check the status of a payment due to her for one of her recent

short stories. Of the two numbers she found on Google, there was no response on the first, while her call to the second number was answered. “The person on the other end

confirmed that he was speaking from the magazine and asked her to install an app called ‘Rusk Support’ as part of the ‘payment process’. We suspect that it was a screen

sharing app, using which the accused obtained the victim’s net banking or UPI wallet credentials. Within a few minutes, two transactions of ₹40,000 each were made from her

account,” a police officer said. When the victim asked the accused about the transaction, the scamster said it had happened by mistake and that he would revert the amount as soon

as she followed the steps as instructed by him. Suspecting something amiss and not wanting to lose any more money, the woman immediately cut the call and deleted the app. She

approached the police on Saturday. The police tried finding the app on the Play Store but it was no longer available, the officer added. In another case, Yazdi Pavri, 57, a

Zoroastrian priest, fell prey to a similar modus operandi. On a Google search for food delivery portal Swiggy’s customer care center, Pavri found a phone number and called it at

around 6pm on Friday. He was supposed to get a refund on a recent order that was never delivered. “The person at the other end convinced the victim to install TeamViewer, a known

screen sharing app, and log in to his Paytm wallet. Pavri followed his instructions as he had paid for his order via Paytm and thought it was part of the process. As soon as he

logged in, a total of ₹1.28 lakh was debited from his two bank accounts linked to his Paytm wallet in four different transactions,” the officer said. Pavri subsequently

approached the police on Saturday. In both the cases, the police have registered offences of cheating and impersonation under the Indian Penal Code along with relevant sections of

the Information Technology (IT) Act. Cyber police are worried about the diversification of the modus operandi, which began with wine shops and has now spread to banks, delivery