Con unfolds

BENGALURU: Cyber criminals using a remote access app have managed to siphon off large sums of money from Bengalureans, fraudulently invoking a payment wallet's KYC updation procedure. A doctor who recently lost over Rs 50,000 to the scamsters has approached the cyber cell of the Bengaluru City Police (BCP).The doctor said that on March 11, he received an SMS on his mobile phone reading, 'BZ-ALERTZ: Dear customer Your PATYM KCY has been expire today please call customer care no 8389888499 immediately your PATYM account blocked 24 hrs thanks you'. The message was sent to his number registered with payment wallet Paytm.Without noticing that Paytm had been typed as 'PATYM' and the grammatical errors that marked the message, the senior physician took the text for real and called the given mobile number."I contacted this number the same day and a person identified himself as Rakesh Agarwal from Paytm consumer care centre. I was asked to update my KYC online and the man offered to guide me. Initially, I was asked to open the app and add Rs 10," he told Banashankari police.While the doctor was adding the money using his debit card, the culprit, using the well-known remote access app AnyDesk, sent an SMS link to the doctor's phone from another cellphone number asking him to click on it.As soon as the doctor clicked on the link, the fraudster gained remote access to the his cellphone and asked him to add money to Paytm on the pretext of checking if the KYC had been updated. "Instantly, I noticed that Rs 4,891 had disappeared from my Paytm wallet linked to my account. Within three minutes an additional Rs 50,000 was deducted," he added.