A regular phone call to a customer about linking Aadhaar card to the phone number has resulted in the young man losing Rs 1.30 lakh along with his valid phone number, reported Manorama Online.

Shashwat Gupta, works at a private firm in Kozhikode. When he first got the call, he unsuspectedly did what he was asked to do over the phone call. He had been receiving similar calls from Airtel as well.

The caller asked him to SMS the number on the SIM card to 121, an Airtel service number. When Gupta told the caller that he was unaware of the number on the SIM card, he was sent a number. The fraud messaged Gupta his own SIM number instead of mine. So when I texted 121 amd that SIM number, Gupta’s got deactivated and his got activated.

Gupta went on to send that number to the caller only to find that his connection has gone. In fact, that number is used for cancellation of the existing SIM card number when a duplicate SIM is obtained.

The suspicion is that fraudsters had made use of the second number to hack into Gupta’s salary account in ICICI and money was withdrawn from the account at the rate of Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000.

The bank got alarmed at the continuous withdrawals. They contacted Gupta on another which was answered by his father. He clarified that it was not his son who was making the withdrawals and that the SIM card was blocked.

Shashwat reportedly said that he had asked the bank to freeze the account but in vain. Even after 18 hours of raising Service Request and repeated follow ups on customer care and branch, the Bank was not able to freeze the balance. As a result early next morning the fraudster was easily able to walk away with the remainder amount.

In totality, Gupta incurred a loss of about Rs 1.30 lakh. They also took away the investments from his fixed deposits.

The entire incident has left Gupta dejected and broken-hearted.

And in a blitz, my salary account was looted.Hi guys! I just lost an amount of Rupees 1.3 lacs from my ICICI Bank… Posted by Shashwat Gupta on Friday, October 6, 2017

The Logical Indian Take

The sharing of sim card no. by Shashwat Gupta led to him being the victim. As the fraudsters had his SIM clone, they would have been able to get the OTP. And today, we live in an age where bank account numbers are commonly shared and are with almost all the private firms with whom we have financial exchange or where we make payments. Telecom companies never make such calls asking for details of SIM or account number.



The Logical Indian urges the authorities to look into the matter and take immediate actions against the fraudsters. Alongside, we also request our community members to remain alert and not divulge out details on any such random calls.