You may have heard of fake army personnel doing frauds on OLX and Quicker.
- https://www.consumercomplaints.in/indian-army-fraud-in-olx-c2116928
- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/navi-mumbai/navi-mumbai-nerul-man-seeking-buyer-to-sell-cupboard-on-olx-loses-rs-8-lakh-to-cyber-frauds/articleshow/88644597.cms
- https://www.consumercomplaints.in/indian-army-bullet-fraud-on-olx-send-money-on-paytm-c2265737
and there are many more..
However, now the fraudsters have found another technique and every landlord and house owners should be aware of this to avoid this happening with you. The good thing is there a very simple way to get away with this or avoid this.
How do they do it?
Imposters use canteen id, aadhar card and pan card of army personnels. They even use illegal phone numbers in the name of same army personnel. But in reality they could be sitting anywhere and doing just another scam with Innocent Indians.
They mainly use UPI app payment requests to do this scam. It is similar to OLX and receiving scam calls.
They try contacting landlords by checking owner profiles on Housing.com, Nobroker.in, 99acres.com and tell them to send pics of house. To gain trust from landlords they spend time on calls systematically.
So this is how it works:
- In the first call they only tell that they are army personnel, being transferred from one place to another.
- They send pics of themselves with army uniforms on, and then show them aadhar card, canteen card.
- They tell landlords that they like property and ask for house property photos.
- By this time, every thing is normal..
- The real game starts after you receive 2nd call from them. They tell that their family likes the house and they are ready to take and we should not give the house to any other tenants.
- The man’s greed is then attacked by them by saying they will pay house rent and deposit by Army card and accountant will call them for more information.
- As a landlord or owner it is very satisfying moment that tenant is not even bothered about the roads, water, light or anything else. He is only interested in sending money as fast as possible.
- The real game is to ask landlord to use UPI payments app to receive payment, which also is very interesting thing.
- They send 1rs. or 5rs. first and ask owner to confirm if they received payment.
- Naturally owner gets the test money and confirms.
- However the next transaction request that fraudsters make is that they send request to pay a big amount like 25,000 rs. or 50,000 rs.
- A known person would know the difference between sending and receiving money. But most people don’t know and they send money instead of receiving.
Real example of such persons will be as shown below:
How to not be a victim of this scam
The only way to not fall for this trap is to use only Bank Account Number and IFSC code for transaction. Do not use any UPI App for such transactions from unknown people.
Fraudsters will make all the excuses to pay using UPI apps like Paytm, Gpay, Phonepe. However, whatever is the case, you should not give them phone number or UPI Id or any of your Id cards, or personal information. They can use any of that to influence owners.
