How UP gang of cyber criminals used leaked Snapdeal data to dupe customers into making e-payments
UP police arrested three people for managing a fake call centre and using leaked data of Snapdeal, an e-retail web site, in order to dupe the website’s customers by offering gadgets at dirt cheap prices, gadgets that were never delivered.
Happiness knew no bounds for over a dozen young graduates who were offered jobs in a leading e-commerce website.
Their jobs, involved calling existing customers of the company and offering attractive rates on products. The catch was that the discounted rates were valid only if the customers instantly made payments to a particular e-wallet.
However, callers and customers didn’t know that they were all being duped by a gang of cyber criminals.
According to the Special Task Force (STF) of Uttar Pradesh Police, 3 people are arrested for fixing a fake call center in Lucknow and used leaked data from Snapdeal, and retail web site, in order to dupe the website’s customers by offering gadgets at dirt cheap prices, gadgets which were never delivered.
Explaining the modus perandi, Triveni Singh, additional superintendent of the police, said, “The cyber criminals fully relied on leaked data and started their Lucknow operations earlier this year. They 1st leaked the data of a leading job-portal and employed young graduates posing as a subsidiary of www.snapdeal.com.”
The gang, with the help of new recruits they set-up a call center from wherever their task was to make calls to existing customers of Snapdeal. They had also leaked contact and address details and order history of the company’s customers. They targeted their existing customers as they knew about shopping behavior. The gang member wrote a script for the callers and based on the shopping history of the customers they used to offer the deal.
A Mumbai-based girl was offered the latest version of iPhone at Rs 26,000, almost 3 times cheaper than the market rate, by the gang members. The caller insisted that the offer is valid only if they make the payment on their mobile e-wallet, that the gang changed every week.
TELECALLERS CAUGHT UNAWARE
During investigation, the cops found that these telecallers did not know they were being misused to dupe thousands of individuals on a daily basis. In fact, the gang members had lured them with incentives if they might sell the deal to most individuals.
Just like in skilled call centres, they were given a script and data leads. They got voice and accent training and based on the shopping behaviour of the customers they used to make an offer, not realizing that after making the payment no product was ever sent or delivered by them.
Those arrested by the STF told during interrogation that they targeted customers from faraway areas, particularly those living in tier-II and III cities to stay far from the police web.The data recovered by them was matched with the data of the job portal and e-commerce web site and it was found to be exactly the same. The web site, from its end, has started probing the leak.