Hyderabad: Cyber crooks have hit upon a new modus operandi. Apart from robbing people under the guise of drug trafficking and money laundering, among several other claims, they are now forcing gullible people to take pre-approved loans on their accounts and transfer the money to them in the name of ‘verification’. After coercing the victims to share their bank details and check them for balance, the fraudsters insist on them to avail pre-approved loans if the latter claim of not having funds in the accounts. In one such case, a bank employee was duped of Rs 5 lakh and in another case, a techie was duped of around Rs 2.5 lakh.In the first case, the 24-year-old working for a private bank and a resident of SR Nagar received a call from cyber criminals a few days ago informing that her Aadhaar details were used to ship drugs abroad and that the bank accounts linked to her Aadhaar had proceeds from drug trafficking. They made her share her personal and bank details for verification. But when she claimed that there were no funds in her accounts, they made her take a pre-approved loan and transfer the loan amount to them. In the second instance, the 28-year-old techie from Kondapur also received a similar call in the first week of July, informing that accounts linked to her Aadhaar were involved in money laundering cases and that her accounts need to be verified to clear her name from any involvement in the cases. They made her to take a personal loan of Rs 2.5 lakh and transfer it to them. In both the cases, the victims were forced to sit in front of their computers over a video call till the fraudsters completed the verification and later abruptly disconnected the calls. Cyber crime officials said the only aim of cyber criminals was to extort money from victims by all means and by threatening and forcing the victims to cough up money. “Those who are targeted by these cyber criminals should either disconnect such threatening calls immediately or avoid responding to calls from unknown numbers. Even if there is no loss of money, such calls can be reported so that those numbers can be flagged and prevented from being used in crimes further,” officials said.

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