Have you heard of scammer’s new trick which is widely now known as “Fake friend scam”? if you are not still aware of it, read this complete article to understand how this fake friend scam works and how you can stay safe from this.
As you know, scammers come up with new tricks to take your money away. Now, they have come up with another trick which is well known as a fake friend scam. In this scam, they will call you by pretending that either they are your old friend or any of your family member’s friends. To get a better understanding of it, read below and share two stories in which scammers used this technique in two different ways to scam the victims.
The first Story is about Akash. In a recent incident, a guy named Akash got tricked by a sneaky scam that’s fooling people in a whole new way. Scammers are pretending to be someone you know and getting folks to send them money, making it look like it’s all legit. This scam is known as the Fake Friend scam.
So, here’s what happened to Akash. He got a call on WhatsApp from a number he didn’t know, saying they were a friend ( fake friend) of his dad. The caller claimed Akash’s dad asked them to send 12000 Rs. Believing the story, Akash shared his UPI ID for the money. after a few seconds, Akash got the message of the amount credited to my bank with 10,000 Rs.
After sending this, scammers confirmed whether he received the amount or not, Now without checking the bank account balance, Akash thought that yes, he had received the 10,000 Rs. Also, he confirmed that scammer that I had received the amount. Now the scammer told him, that 2000 Rs more was left to send to him. so now he will send me 2000 Rs.
But here’s the twist: instead of sending 2000 Rs, the scammer sent 20,000 Rs to Akash’s account. Akash saw a message saying he got the money and, without checking if the message was real, he sent back 18,000 Rs as told by the caller(caller said, by mistake, he had sent 20,000 Rs as he was asked to send 2000 Rs only by his father).
Soon after, the scammer blocked Akash on WhatsApp, and that’s when he realized he fell for a trick and lost a big chunk of money.
Turns out, the message about the money wasn’t from the bank but from a personal number. It was a tricky detail that Akash missed in the rush of things.
Now let’s jump to another story where scammers used different ways to target the victim.
Aman got a call from a Canadian number on WhatsApp. Scammers pretend like he is his old friend, who is presently living in Canada. In early talks, scammers start the basic conversation like, how are you? How is everything going on? etc etc. And tried to earn the trust of him. After some conversation scammers ask for help from Aman. The scammer says “There is a Travel agent in Mumbai, to whom I paid 90,000 Rs to book my flight ticket to India. 10,000 Rs more need to book the flight ticket, now my card is not working. I am not able to send money to the travel agent, so just do me one favor, please send more to that travel agent on my behalf, if you pay him then my flight ticket will get the book and also I have bought an iPhone 14 for you. When I come to India, I will give you the iPhone”, As that scammer already got the trust of the aman, Aman agreed to help him out just for the sake of the iPhone. Aman pays the travel agent and informs the scammer after it. That’s it, scammer blocked his phone number as expected.
Trust is what sometimes costs you a lot. So it’s important to stay active and make the right judgments on whom you should trust or not. Now someone calling you and pretending like he is your old close friend, it’s really strange how you can believe this, not even this how you can pay money to him or someone else without even cross-checking whether that person is legit or genuine or not.
In recent times, we have observed many cases of fake friend scams, where someone pretends like some old friend and asks the money from the victim by making up some random innocent story. 2 or 2 people out of 10 people will fall into such traps and that’s enough for this scammers to earn good amount of money on daily basis.
How to stay safe?
1:- in most cases, scammers have contacted the victim through WhatsApp, so you must keep unknown calls silent on WhatsApp. This feature is given by WhatsApp. If this feature is not showing to you, just update the app from the app store.
2:- Do not believe any random guy on call and send any money to anyone even if he claims anything.
3:- Avoid sharing your number with unknown people, the fewer numbers you share, the fewer unknown calls you receive which will reduce the chance of getting such scam calls from scammers.
4:- Must report such cases to cyber police, Do not ignore such incidents. The more you report, the higher your chances of stopping such scammers
5:- Most importantly, Download our app from the Google play store. Our app “Verifyscams app” will keep you updated about the latest scams and keep on informing you of all news related to scams. This app is free and easy to use. Just create the account and start using it. If you have any doubt you can ask the questions also.
These stories are a reminder for everyone to be careful when someone asks for money out of the blue. Scammers are getting clever, so it’s super important to double-check any strange money stuff and always be sure about who’s asking. Stay smart, stay aware, and protect yourself from these new scams or Fake Friend scams! keep using Verifyscams.com
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