Jaipur: The Jaipur police have found that several scammers are using phone numbers of unsuspecting daily wagers and rickshaw pullers to impersonate ministers and bureaucrats to dupe people on WhatsApp.
Additional commissioner of police (crime) Ajay Pal Lamba, said that police teams followed trails of such dubious WhatsApp accounts. Much to the police’s surprise, they found the instant messaging app was running on phone numbers owned by rickshaw pullers and labourers.
“None of these people had WhatsApp accounts. Many did not even have a smartphone to support the application. Others were simply using old keypad phones,” Lamba said.
According to Lamba, the scammers tricked labourers into sharing their OTPs. “Once a scammer gets hold of OTP, he can use it to run WhatsApp on any device. Therefore, a number may belong to someone, but the messaging app was used by another one on a different device,” he said.
The police said that the accused often rely on the same modus operandi. They download images of senior IAS, IPS and ministers. Same pictures are used as display pictures (DP) to trick people and bilk money from them.
Lamba said that police have managed to identify and put a freeze on nearly 108 such mobile devices in the last month. “There are provisions which allow us to block devices used in cheating,” he said.
For the past two weeks, there has been a glut of scammers using photos of two senior IPS officials while trying to bilk money from people.
“Usually, it’s a subordinate staff of senior officials that are under the watchlist of scammers, but in some cases, they have also attempted to cheat the general public,” said another official.
FacebookTwitterInstagramKOO APPYOUTUBE
