Nithin Kamath, the CEO and co-founder of stock broker Zerodha, recently took to LinkedIn to warn his followers about phishing scams.
In his post on April 28, Nithin Kamath spoke about three ways he had seen fraudsters try to dupe people. One modus operandi, he said, was posing as government officials and seeking money for charity and other purposes.
“Many folks on our team have received social media and WhatsApp messages saying I was in some urgent need of money from fake accounts,” he added.
Kamath said another way was for fraudsters to create fake accounts in the names of well-known people and send followers messages to purchase penny stocks and cryptocurrencies.
The Zerodha CEO shared a screenshot of a conservation a fake account in his name had with a social media user.
The user asked the account for advice about investments. In response, the impostor offered to teach him about cryptocurrencies.
“There is an online auto program learning and earning crypto scheme on my private trading platform that can generate you income of at least $10,000 in a week from now,” the person using the fake account said. “You can join in with the others and start earning too. I can mentor you.”
Kamath added that people were being lured into sharing credentials of their trading accounts.
“Once the fraudster has access to the account, losses are created and money is transferred to other trading accounts by trading penny stocks, illiquid options or transferring stocks,” he said.
A third method, Kamath said, was the use of bogus customer support numbers advertised as that of big companies on Google.
“When the customer calls up the number, the scamsters ask for a UPI transfer or send UPI pull requests from handles that seem like they belong to the main brand,” he added.
Kamath said the number of such phishing frauds had gone through the roof. “The only way to protect yourself is to not trust anybody asking for money or offering something that seems too good to be true,” he added.
