A Bengaluru man lost more than Rs 38,000 from his LazyPay loan application account after receiving 10,000 messages with one-time passwords (OTPs) on his phone, a Times of India report said.
Channakeshava KS, a sales executive working at an automobile firm, got a call from a number at 11:39 am on Monday and found it to be an automated one, with a voice message that read, "We have received an order for Rs 5,345 from your Swiggy account, if it is you please press 2, otherwise press 1,".
The man had, however, not made any food order on Swiggy. "Since I hadn't ordered anything I pressed 1. The next voice message said, 'We have sent an OTP to your mobile number. Kindly enter the OTP to verify your account'. I typed a six-digit OTP on the call. After 30 seconds, the voice message said, 'Your account is verified and it is safe now, thank you'." he said.
A few minutes later, the man received four more OTPs on his phone from the online delivery platform. "I assumed somebody was trying to log into my account. I didn't worry much because unless I give my mobile number and OTP, none would be able to log in," he added.
Later in the afternoon, the man began getting more messages and calls and decided to log out of his Swiggy account. It is then that he realised he had been scammed and Rs 38,720 was deducted from his loan application account.
"From 3.55pm, I started getting calls. Till 4.24pm, I had more than 20 missed calls from different numbers, including landline and mobile. The calls kept getting disconnected without any communication even as SMSs continued to flow in."
"I realised the flood of calls and messages was to distract me. Around 4.24pm, I logged out my Swiggy account. The fraudsters had lost access to my account and stopped the calls," Channakeshava, who had by then lost Rs 38,720, said.
The man filed a complaint at a local police station and authorities asked him to log in to his Swiggy account, doing which he realised that all the information had been deleted.
"After I wrote the complaint, the inspector said it was too late and asked me to come the next morning for registration of FIR. Next morning, I went with all the required documents. The inspector asked me to log into my Swiggy account. When I did, I could see that all the information from my account was deleted and it was asking me to sign up again," he said.
An email was sent to Swiggy regarding the incident, who said they needed more time to look into the matter. LazyPay temporarily blocked the man's account to avoid any further deductions.
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