Beware of cyber scamsters, you may be conned!

Cybercrimes like swindling money out of your bank accounts by forging official papers, hacking bank accounts and siphoning out money, have become rampant in the city and the police are making regular arrests in these cases.

A couple of trends observed by Mumbai police's cyber cell over the past few years are, accused behind Nigerian frauds lure people into their trap by either offering them overseas jobs or surprise them that they have won a Rs 2.5 million lottery.

They target more than a lakh of people at random and a few who are desperately in need of a job and are greedy, fall easy prey to the Nigerian scamsters. In case of the job scam, the gang parts with forged official papers and offer letters of multinational companies and corporate brands in UK and US. The gullible victim coughs up an initial servicing fee of Rs 50,000, which is collected by a third person.

Slowly and steadily as the victim is made to believe that he is going to get the job, they get the victim to part with the entire fee amount in installments claiming that it is needed for Reserve Bank of India (RBI) clearance.

In case of lottery fraud, a person is lured into disclosing sensitive details like bank account numbers and debit and credit card numbers and other related information. After this, they use a third person, to ask the victim to part with an amount of Rs 50,000 or more, as clearance charges, which is required for sending the money across to their respective accounts. Once the victim sends a small amount hoping to lay his hand on the prize money, the Nigerian scamsters siphon out the amount and vanish into thin air.

Nigerians operating out from Pydhonie who had been recently arrested by the police, had e- mail Id's of more than 50,000 people with them. The masterminds behind such crimes are hard to track down, as they use locals to part with sensitive information like their bank accounts for a small share in the fraudulent deal.

To caution such gullible persons, a cyber cell official told us , that citizens must not respond to such e- mails. Also, responding to such messages, one must not shell out even a single rupee to get a job or a lottery prize.