The evolution in technology has also helped the criminals and crooks also develop themselves to fool people and squeeze their money using modern ways of earning and making money. The modern day fraudsters are using smarter ways of looting people from your bank accounts, which has emerged out in a form of QR Code Scam. This scam now involves a number of fraudsters sharing their QR Codes for making the payments with the help of luring the victims for sending out money. A large number of cases have come into the picture where the online crooks are fooling people with the help of WhatsApp.
The growing number of cases in Indian cities like Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Pune, and Bangalore where victims have reported to the police about how they are being lured and taken for a ride by squeezing their money directly from their bank accounts. As per reports, the criminals are now calling up the shop owners and stating them that they want to sell or buy their products in bulk quantity. The reports suggest that the criminals first get the phone numbers that are being used by the victims for the UPI Payment gateway and then generate a QR Code in their app and then they send the same to the shopkeeper using WhatsApp.
They then ask to scan the same and ask them to enter the pin from their application. They then are seen sending out the payment request link for a payment with the said link. When the victims while they are distracted when they click the link and enter the pin, they end up losing their money. The fraudsters also get the money by asking the victim to pay as they have not received the payment not just twice but thrice saying that they have not received the money. This way end up getting extra money from the victims’ gateway. The experts feel that people tend to get misled or go for a ride as they do not understand the general misconception about the way the UPI works. The users using UPI to make payments using apps like PhonePe and Google Pay or even through the internet banking should know that they do not have to scan a QR code while making any payment. Hence the police getting all these complaints seems to have got pissed off getting these complaints. They went on to say that in order to avoid getting fooled by the fraudsters, they should not scan the QR code sent out by any unknown people without carrying out the veracity. Also, as these UPI transactions are often linked to bank accounts then it should be simple for police to trace the fraudsters down. Also, people and consumers using the QR codes to pay anything using UPI option only when they find things are in proper order and people asking for the same is known to you.