New Courier Delivery Scam: Woman Pays Rs 5 To Receive Order, Ends Up Losing Rs 80,000 – News18

Scams of every kind have been working rampant in India. Not solely have scammers develop into more and more subtle, however they’ve additionally began utilizing novel strategies to realize the belief of potential victims.

While we’ve seen scams like job scams on Telegram and WhatsApp, and even the pretend military officer rip-off, whereby fraudsters posing as protection personnel get in contact with you on brokering and used items marketplaces, the courier supply rip-off has largely gone below the radar–during which–fraudsters masquerading as supply brokers ship you malicious hyperlinks. This is precisely what occurred with a lady primarily based in Mohali, Punjab.

According to a TOI report, a lady named Shefali Chaudhary misplaced Rs 80,000 after she was instructed to ship Rs 5 to obtain a parcel. The scammer instructed the sufferer that she must ship Rs 5 as “handling charges” to obtain the parcel and even confirmed her deal with on the cellphone itself. The scammer ended up producing a cost hyperlink and requested the lady to pay Rs 5 on the identical. However, when she went to do it, Rs 40,000 was deducted twice from her checking account, totaling Rs 80,000.

We have beforehand seen one other model of this rip-off whereby scammers ask for OTPs to verify or cancel a “courier” that you simply by no means ordered, and in doing so, they siphon off your hard-earned cash.

How To Be Safe:

In order to be protected from scams of this nature, all the time do not forget that no official courier supply would ask for “handling charges” previous to the supply, and even when there have been any, they’re ideally paid earlier than the courier is distributed. So, all the time cross-check and confirm with family and friends if somebody had a pending order.

Moreover, in case you obtain international hyperlinks in your gadget, by no means click on on them, as they may probably drain your account and will even inject malware into it—inflicting long-term hurt.

Additionally, don’t give out delicate info reminiscent of Aadhar or driving licenses to random supply brokers, as this may increasingly trigger an issue as nicely. And, as a common rule of thumb, bear in mind if one thing is simply too good to be true, it normally is.