Credit card reward: After electricity bill scam, cyber crooks adopt new method to dupe people

The fraudsters send a link to claim the rewards which opens a portal with the bank logo, asking the recipient to fill in credit card details. Representation pic

After the electricity fraud scam, cyber fraudsters seem to have adopted a new modus operandi wherein they send promotional messages about credit card rewards and get victims to provide their card details. A DIG-rank officer of the Indian Coast Guard recently lost Rs 1.45 lakh to such a con and registered a complaint with Malabar Hill police. Another similar case was filed with the Amboli police where a working professional lost Rs 40,580.

As per the FIR filed by Malabar Hill police, the Coast Guard officer received a promotional message from Vk-iRewd that stated: "Dear user, your ICICI Credit Card Points Worth R5,884 will expire by tomorrow. Kindly redeem points in cash back by clicking." The officer then clicked on the link which opened a page with the logo of the bank.

Also read: Mumbai: How electricity frauds operate and what you should and should not do

"I then filled in my credit card details including CVV and expiry details and submitted the form. Within four minutes, six transactions took place from the account," the officer said in his statement. He immediately called the bank to block the card and approached the police. In the second case too, the victim received a promotional message and filled in the details, losing Rs 40,580.

Cops have been receiving complaints of electricity frauds since the past few months with more than 100 FIRs filed across Mumbai and Maharashtra. The Maharashtra cyber also ran an awareness campaign by sending more than 2 crore messages alerting people about the electricity and bank KYC fraud.