Fraudsters analysing social media details of known persons

New Delhi: By analysing the social media profile of possible targets and collecting details about known persons who comment most in the profile, fraudsters are running their pan-India racket of making easy money through cheating. This was revealed after the Cyber Cell of Shahdara district busted a gang of cheats from Devseras in Uttar Pradesh.

Police sources told the Millennium Post that the group of swindlers selects a series of four numbers belonging to a specific area and then they randomly add next six digits to form a ten-digit mobile number. "The next step, to acquire more details about the cell phone number like name, place, email-id for which they use phone number searches application," said sources.

Sources further claimed that in many cases, social media profiles are created through the phone number. For further details, accused puts cell number on the search engine of the social media application. Once the profile is visible, an intensive analysis is made on all photos, status of the possible victim, to find out the known person who regularly comments or likes them.

"Then, they study the social media profile of the known person (friend or relative). After making sure that they have collected all details, they make a phone call on the number," said sources.

During a particular call, the accused pretended himself as the known person of the potential victim and tells him that his original cell phone number is not working so he (fraudster) is calling from a new number. The cheat shows the potential target that he is in urgent need of money when the victim gets trapped by the false story cooked by the accused. He sends an amount which is later transferred into five different virtual wallets.

Sources added that the gang is divided into groups of four to five individuals. "From one mobile phone, they make phone calls to approximately 50 to 60 people all over the country and more than 200 calls are made in a day. Later, the same numbers are scanned in social media platforms," sources added. According to the police, in some cases, the mobile number holder catch their trick. Police claimed that the gang taught youngsters different languages so that if they call another state, they have an idea of how to talk.