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| 'If you don't want a rap sheet, arrange the money': Fraud that is robbing Pakistanis of their savings |
It was a few days ago when Shakila Bano, the current President of Women Chambers of Commerce, was in her office in Lahore with her elder sister and some other colleagues when she suddenly received a call on her sister's phone from an unknown number. It was about half past two in the afternoon.
The first question the caller asked was, 'Are you Nabila (pseudonym) talking?'
When the caller got a 'yes' answer, he said, 'We are taking your son.'
Nabila got very worried on hearing this and immediately switched on the speaker of the phone.
Talking to BBC, Shakila Bano said that her sister in her office was talking calmly on the phone at first, but when she heard about her son, her voice got louder and she called immediately. Turned on the speaker. Nabila meanwhile kept asking the caller which of her sons they were taking and why, and what he had done.
Nabila has two sons who are 19 and 22 years old respectively.
"You have a son and you don't even know his name," the caller rudely inquired.
According to Shakila Bano, her sister said that she knows the names of her children and that is why she is asking which son are you taking?
After a while, the sound of a child's cry started coming from the speakerphone, who was shouting, "Mama, they are taking me, save me."
According to Shakila Bano, her sister, in a state of panic, kept asking the caller who they were and why they were doing this.
According to Shakila, at first, we thought that the children might have had a fight somewhere, but after a while, after the call ended, I realized that my sister's children are quite big, but the crying sounds heard on the phone are from someone. She was a small child.
Amid this worry and thought, Shakila Bano and her sister started calling the numbers of the two children, but the numbers of children were not being contacted, which increased the worry of their mother that maybe this is really the case. Don't be true.
According to Shakila Bano, after trying for a long time, the younger son was finally spoken to and when asked where he was at the moment, he told that he was given a paper in college and had just finished.
But since the second son could not be contacted, the mother's worry was turning into a belief that the alleged kidnappers might have taken her second son with them.
According to Shakeela Bano, we called her again from an unknown number and asked her to talk to the child, but in response, the same crying sounds and the child's pleas were heard saying, 'Mama, take me. have been...'
Shakeela says but meanwhile we got in touch with the other child and he told us that he was busy somewhere so he could not pick up the call.
According to Shakila Bano, after hearing the news of the well-being of the two children, she tried to contact the alleged kidnappers again, but the number was closed after a while.
According to Shakila Bano, that half hour was the most painful time of her life. According to him, it took several hours for his sister to come out of that state of fear, and 'if we were not with Baji at that time, she might have sent him money in haste and panic.'
But before going into the details of what all this was, let's look at another case.
Hello, I am speaking in Hindi. I had come to Faisalabad to meet one of my friends, but I was caught by the police. Please don't tell mummy, papa, they are killing me, please save me.'
Mah Noor received this phone call when she was busy working in her office. Mahnoor is associated with a private TV channel.
Chand Sankid's call blew Mahnoor's senses because Hadi was the younger son of one of his cousins.
Mah Noor was still talking when apparently another person grabbed the phone from Hadi and spoke to Mah Noor in a harsh tone. "We are talking to Sadar Thana Faisalabad and we have caught your cousin Hadi in the custody of a girl and now we are starting to take further action."
Mahnoor was shocked by this sudden situation and at the same time the caller said that if you want the rape case not to be registered against his cousin, arrange for some money immediately so that the case can be dismissed. The deal used to start at 50,000, it was finalized at 25,000 and then at 15,000.
According to Mahnoor, she was confused and the caller then shared a number asking her to get Jazz Cash.
Meanwhile, Mahnoor thought that why not contact the channel's Faisalabad bureau and send someone from there to the police station to find out the truth. As the matter was of this nature, Mahnoor did not speak to anyone in the family.
Mah Noor sent one of his colleagues from the Faisalabad Bureau to Sadar Faisalabad police station who found out that no such case had come to him. According to Mah Noor, she was now in the same dilemma as to what to do. Meanwhile, she received another call from the same unknown number and Mah Noor told her that she had contacted the police station but there was no reply. There is no such case, in which the caller expressed extreme anger as to why he contacted the police station.
The caller told Mahnoor that he is now taking the rape victim to the hospital for medical treatment and now if he wants to save his cousin, he will have to pay more money.
On Mah Noor's insistence, the callers then talked to Hadi you should save me, they are killing me. At the same time, Mah Noor called one of his friends who was covering the crime beat and told him the whole situation, who told him to immediately call Hadi's house first. According to Mah Noor, when he called Hadi's house, Hadi's house But it was there.
Mah Noor said that this sudden situation and then the callers talking by her name and mentioning her cousin's name also made her worried and she thought that maybe something really happened to her cousin. has gone
So what is the matter?
Even if you have not received such a call yourself, then one of your loved ones or acquaintances must have received such a call from an unknown number in which the caller addresses you by your name and asks you to It asks for details of your identity card number, ATM card number, bank accounts, etc. and the reason is usually given that the bank needs these details for account verification or updating the bank account.
As soon as you share these details, the caller immediately turns on internet banking and then gets a few more details and a password, and the money disappears from the account.
This is one of the many types of financial fraud on the rise in Pakistan, which has fallen victim to simple citizens as well as many educated people.
According to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), there are five different types of financial fraud, including ATM fraud, bank account fraud, and extortion of money by fear of involvement in serious crimes such as rape, murder, etc. through fake calls. Fraud by being a friend of a relative living in a foreign country and extorting money by luring a reward etc.
This method of unknown callers is organized in such a way that you are not given time to think, understand or find out by calling the loved one's house and through this fraud, a good amount of money is collected in a short time. goes
Before going into the details of how these crimes are committed, it is also important to mention that according to FIA officials, these organized groups operate mostly from Faisalabad, Hafizabad, Sargodha, and Lahore divisions, while they operate throughout the country. Every year crores of rupees are stolen from the educated class apart from thousands of simple citizens through fraud.
According to official records, the number of such cases has increased from hundreds to thousands and is continuously increasing.
Where do the accused get the data of sensitive information of citizens?
FIA Cyber Crime Wing Punjab Additional Director Muhammad Sarfraz Chaudhry has been dealing with cybercrime cases for the past several years. He told the BBC that earlier cases like online harassment, hacking of social media accounts, or broadcasting or publishing objectionable content on them were more reported, but in recent years, the number of financial frauds reported to the Cyber Crimes Wing has increased. It is the most in cases with
According to Mohammad Sarfaraz Chaudhry, the root of all such crimes are fake SIMs and fake accounts which organized groups cleverly activate by taking citizens' data.
According to a senior FIA officer, the accused carry out this crime in a very organized manner and for this purpose, private data of citizens are collected from banks, telecom companies, retail shops, NADRA, and other sources with the connivance of the staff there. Get what is regularly paid for, i.e. data is bought.
According to Sarfraz Chaudhry, he also arrested bank and telecom company employees in several cases who were involved in selling citizens' data to criminal gangs.
On the other hand, according to another investigation officer posted in FIA Cyber Crimes Wing Faisalabad, 'Bank statement, call data record (CDR), location, identity card (photocopy), travel history, fake sims, etc. are all sold. You should have money.'
According to him, during the investigation of the accused, it was also found that now they resort to such apps with the help of which the confidential data of the citizens, identity card numbers, and even the address of the house can be found easily.
Procedure
According to the investigating officer, for such crimes, fraud gang members make calls to random people's numbers and during this, simple phones are used instead of smartphones and one gang operates from different cities at the same time.
According to the investigating officer, fraudsters make hundreds of calls every day and have a success rate of 5 to 10 percent in duping people. They scare people by telling them about crimes like rape etc. and then extort money from them too.
He claimed that these gangs work in regular shifts and during this time they also use recorded sounds of children crying and police wireless as needed to fool the victim.
According to the investigating officer, the rate of robbing citizens by threatening them starts from 50 thousand and if the financial status of the affected party is thin, then this rate decreases to 10 to 15 thousand.
Most of these people pretend to be policemen and all people are afraid of them.
But how these fraud gangs are easily committing such a big fraud for years and are out of the grasp of the law, FIA Cybercrime Additional Director Mohammad Sarfaraz Chaudhry says that it is not that their organization is in the hands of this question. But they sit idly by and such gangs have a free hand but they catch such criminals daily.
According to Sarfaraz Chaudhry, in the year 2022, hundreds of people were arrested for whose possession of sims and cash were also recovered and many people were also punished.
According to Cyber Circle Multan and Faisalabad, more than 500 suspects involved in this type of fraud were arrested last year.
According to an investigating officer of Cyber Crimes Wing Lahore, many senior government officials have also lost their earnings in the past by falling into the trap of these people. According to him, in only one case of ATM and bank account verification fraud in 2018, the accused had obtained a serious amount of 3 crores from the account of a woman, but later some of the accused were caught.
How to avoid this type of fraud and what are the authorities doing to address it?
In response to this question, Additional Director FIA Chaudhry Sarfaraz says that citizens have to be careful and alert and never share their personal information with anyone over the phone. According to Sarfraz Chaudhry, no bank or telecom company ever calls and asks for your ATM card, ID card, and bank details, nor do they ever call from a UAN number, any such call. It will always be fake and by criminal gangs.
According to the FIA officer, criminal gangs can use software to make calls that make citizens think the call is coming from a telecom company's UAN number. According to Sarfraz Chaudhry, up to 15 fake calls can be matched with the help of software and these gangs also do such things.
According to Sarfraz Chaudhry, fake sims and apps supporting criminals should be stopped immediately, then this crime can be controlled.
He said that in case of any call coming on the phone, the user should contact 15 or the local police and inform them about the call received and the details.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) spokesperson Malahit Obaid told the BBC that the authority has made many changes to its system since December last year and introduced an integrated system to prevent fake sims.
"Since December, we have introduced a multi-finger biometric verification system for verification of mobile SIMs to protect citizens from fraud through fake SIMs."
According to the spokesman, this new system has made it impossible to get a SIM card with fake fingerprints. He said that the entire responsibility of registration of sims is with PTA and they are well aware of their responsibilities in preventing the registration of fake sims.
In response to a question, PTA spokesperson Malahat Obaid said that the responsibility of different stakeholders, including FIA, Security, and Exchange, is assigned to the different apps running on the Internet, from which citizens' data is obtained. Commission of Pakistan i.e. SECP, State Bank of Pakistan, etc. are involved because the apps are run by a company about which PTA will be told by SECP then we will take action.