CHENNAI: There’s a new scam in town. Beware of any phone calls from men claiming to be customs or police officers saying you are suspected of links to terrorists or drug dealers.

On Friday alone, the ‘1930’ cyber crime portal received 10 complaints from people who had been conned. While most complained that they had lost between 50,000 and 1 lakh, a woman from Adyar lost 19 lakh.
The woman in her late thirties told police that she got a call from a man who spoke in Hindi and English and said he was a customs officer from Mumbai. He told her the authorities had received information about a ‘suspicious parcel’ containing her mailing address.

He told her she was suspected of links to a drugs cartel. To establish his authority, he also told her details of some recent phone calls she had made. He told her they were tracking her movements and then told her he was transferring the call to the Andheri police station. Then another man questioned the woman.
They kept the conversation going for nearly two hours, during which they pressured her into sending them some money. They told the woman that she would be arrested immediately if she hung up on them.
Police said they seem to have sent her a link to transfer 30,000 and then wiped her bank account clean. That’s how she lost 19 lakh.
The cybercrime wing police suspect the conmen may have hacked her mobile phone and her mail ID.
A police officer said that in all the 10 cases reported in and around Chennai city on Friday, the victims were aged from 35 to 50 and most of them were women. The conman spoke to them continuously for more than one hour, without allowing them to think or consult anyone.
Police said preliminary inquiries revealed that the money siphoned off from the victims was routed through bank accounts rented out by some poor villagers for 5,000 to 8,000 a month. The conman has their user IDs and passwords and ATM cards to withdraw the money.
Cybercrime cops have formed special teams to track and nab the suspects.