Beware: Aadhaar cons on the loose

New Delhi: Several complaints of fraud, in which money was suspected to be siphoned out of bank accounts of victims on the pretext of linking Aadhaar cards to their respective bank accounts and mobile networks, have left the police in Delhi-NCR baffled.

According to the police, the digital fraud is carried out in a planned way by scammers and seems to be similar to the debit card scams where people used to fall prey and ended up giving confidential information on a phone call. Though the police is investigating a number of these cases, which involves Aadhaar-linked United Payments Interface apps, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

A police officer in economic offences wing said that the modus operandi in this racket involves a complicated procedure in which a caller, pretending to be a representative of a bank, calls a customer and says that the victim has not updated or linked his Aadhaar number with the bank. To gain the confidence of the victim, the fraudsters even give out the common 12-digit code on the debit card, which would be unique to each bank, and then ask them to reveal the remaining four digits, unique to each customer. Along with the last four digits, the victim is asked to reveal the CVV (card verification value) number or ATM pin. 

At times, the caller first asks the victim for their Aadhaar number and then tells them it is a verification call. The caller then asks them to reveal the code sent to their phone from the Unique Identification Authority of India to complete the verification process. When the victim reveals this number, the fraudsters place orders by using various payment modes like Paytm, Billdesk, and other platforms that immediately generate a one-time password (OTP) on the customer’s mobile.

As the customer is in the dark about the actual fraud and presumes that the OTP is for linking Aadhaar with debit/credit card, he/she shares the OTP with the fake tele-callers. As the OTP has short validity (between 5 and 15 minutes), the culprits make as many purchases as possible using various gateways. On the other hand, the victim gets confused on seeing a series of alerts regarding purchase of mobile recharge coupons and products online.

A police officer, on the condition of anonymity, said that the fraudsters seem to be operating from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi. However, no arrests have been made till date.