Mumbai Businessman Loses ₹ 1.86 Crore After Getting 6 Missed Calls From Scamsters

A few missed calls from an unknown number and you probably don’t turn a hair. However, 6 missed calls cost a businessman from Mumbai Rs. 1.86 crores. The man who chooses anonymity and is dubbed Mr. Shah is a victim of SIM swapping, which is an increasingly popular scam today.

Shah saw 6 missed calls on his mobile at around 2 am one night. He assumed the calls were from the UK since the numbers had a UK code of +44. He attempted calling back in the morning, but to his surprise, his SIM card had been deactivated!

Upon calling his service provider, he was informed that he himself had requested the deactivation. Alarmed and suspicious of a scam, he called his bank immediately only to realize Rs. 1.86 crores had been stolen from his account. The bank reported that the money had been transferred to 14 accounts across the country through twenty-eight different transactions according to Money Control. While the bank tried to retrieve the sum, they could only recover Rs. 20 lakhs. The authorities investigated the scam called SIM swapping that has conmen extract your unique SIM number only to clone your SIM after calling your phone.

The businessman based in Mahim initiated the investigation on December 28. However, the cops realized that the SIM replacement request had been filed with the company at 11.15 pm on December 27- long before Shah got the missed calls at 2 am on December 28.

“My company’s bank account is linked to my mobile phone, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the cheats will empty my account with such ease,” says Shah according to the Mumbai Mirror.

An FIR was filed in the BKC Cyber Crime Police Station. “We suspect the scamsters had access to Shah’s unique SIM number and had initiated a SIM swap. To ensure he doesn’t suspect anything, they called him late in the night when his phone was on silent mode,” a police officer revealed to the paper.

Apparently, the culprits discerned the unique SIM number via hacking. The police suspect this because Shah maintains he didn’t share this number with anyone. He didn’t even receive any calls requesting that information.

“When you open a fake version of your bank website, your details are automatically compromised. Your data is accessed by scamsters every time you access unsecured web connections. We suspect Shah may have accessed one such email or app,” the officer added.

However, this is not the first SIM cloning incident. A similar case occurred in Ghatkopar when an enterprise lost Rs 50 lakh after their accountant’s SIM card was swapped. With SIM frauds at an all-time high, one must be extra careful or risk their security being compromised!