Cyber Criminals Are Now Using Phonepe As A Medium To Scam People

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Cybercrimes are not new to India, each day at least hundreds become victims to cyber fraudsters, no matter how much efforts the government puts, fraudsters always keep finding a new way to scam people

according to the research by Statista cyber crimes spiked in the year 2019 like never before, due to the coronavirus outbreak, people started shifting from offline to online, which’s a win-win moment for cybercriminals

as per a report by The Hindu, 37 lakh cybercrime incidents took place in India over the past 18 months, which challenged India for a centralized cybercrime reporting portal

Cybercrime investigators are now warning of the latest ongoing financial scam campaign across India, here what you should know

Beware of a UPI Financial Scam campaign

Now cyber fraudsters using Phonepe, Gpay and other UPI service to scam people, here what you need to know about the scam

Firstly let us tell you What is Phonepe (Incase if you don’t know)

Phonepe is a Digital Payment Company that offers UPI transactions across India, through which you can send and receive money online by linking your UPI, there are many other UPI services available such as Gpay, BHIM etc.

Once there was a feature on Phonepe which allowed anyone to request money from people whom they know after fraudsters abused this functionality to make financial frauds, later Phonepe has disabled this feature, but completely not

The story not yet over, fraudsters found a new way to achieve the same, there are many other UPI apps that allow request money option to other UPI ids, here we aren’t defaming any company reputation just sharing the truth

Phonepe request money scam

Here is a new level of financial scam discovered by our Cybercrime investigators and OSINT experts,

there is a UPI ID known as woohoo@paytm that requests money to people through UPI apps, where many people became a victim of this fraud

Here how they do it

According to our Cyber Experts research, Firstly they gather mass phone numbers and personal details of people from data breaches and dumps, people often buy the dumps from the darknet marketplaces, then they verify that these phone numbers has linked to any UPI, if yes then they start requesting money to the victims at the same time they make a phone calls to the victims with their own scamming scripts, such as “your UPI services stopped working whether would you like to continue or discontinue”, “You won an offer from some XYZ company, but due to covid lockdown we are unable to send the item instead we credited the amount to your UPI” etc..

when the victim hears these words they got excited and follows the fraudsters words, later realises they faced a fraud

here is the proof of the incident that took place with a victim, which allowed our researchers to dig deep into it

on May 17, an 18year old lost his hard-earned money by this fraud and contacted one of our Cybercrime investigators, here is the story of how it happened

In the evening he got a call from an unknown number, saying you won a cashback offer if you want to avail yourself just goto Phonepe and click on the Pay Now button, then directed to enter the victim Phonepe UPI PIN,

the victim entered his UPI, then the transfer was successful, thus the victim lost his money and rushed to a cyber expert

Our OSINT expert reported that he is not the only person who became a victim to this financial scam, there are many others too

here you can see some buzz from the social media

Dear @Paytm, 1 of your user (fraudster) having upi id woohoo@paytm is requesting money in my @PhonePe_ . The fraudster was using ph no 8389869376 to call and asking to pay in @PhonePe_ . pic.twitter.com/5xEQ5hWZmA

— Sudipta K Sahu (@Sudipta2k5) November 23, 2020

@Paytmcare @Paytm kindly block this UPI handle it’s spam. woohoo@paytm https://t.co/Bqja6P7GH3

— Rajat Vijay Mishra (@rajatmishra21) March 1, 2021

@NPCI_NPCI @PhonePe_ @RBI @jagograhakjago got spam call from +918345021513
and sent me a collect request on Phone pe app.@Paytmcare @Paytm kindly block this UPI handle it’s spam. woohoo@paytm https://t.co/xZb0OoIScC pic.twitter.com/WxAIfA1bCR

— पूनम अनुप बोरकर 💞 (@gawande_poonam) March 14, 2021

Fraud UPI woohoo@paytm.
Logo ko unnecessary pay request karke sabka paise le leta hai .plzz take action on him. @Uppolice @myogioffice @PMOIndia @UPGovt pic.twitter.com/8uBIeLf2Kc

— Mukesh (@mukeshyadav_12) December 6, 2020

Hey @Paytm n @PhonePe_ @PhonePeSupport, do u ppl hv any mechanism to prevent fraud wit ur apps. First I got an otp for my account access then got a call to accept reward by clicking on rs2599 debit rqst on phonepe. Rqst id woohoo@paytm tran id: PTM20200520096914198409202005200939

— Tarun Chhipa (@chhipa_tarun) May 20, 2020

Adding new number of the fraudster
9330526119

Same thing happened with me but luckily amount was not deducted@Paytm @Paytmcare could you guys just block the Paytm id – woohoo@paytm@phonepe_safety @PhonePe_ @PhonePeSupport what is your response to this fraud id ??

— vni (@IshVibs) July 7, 2020

Dear @Paytm and @PhonePe_ kindly look into this.Unsolicited unauthorised transaction are coming from this user. woohoo@paytm in phonepe platform. Whom to contact for these type of activities @RBI #fraud #paytmkaro #upiapps pic.twitter.com/ML2d7oWzci

— Sumesh Das (@sumesh_im) February 11, 2021

The story is not yet over, some people don’t even come to raise share, while some have ruched to their perspective cyber cell, despite all those reported to Paytm and PhonePe to Block the UPI ID, none of these companies taken any action to block the UPI to prevent further incidents