International Phishing Ring Busted

They would send their victims text messages informing them they had won a lottery or that they had been named in a will and had inherited a large sum of money:

 ”In the lottery scam, the victim receives a message stating that he has been randomly picked up in a lottery system of a multi-national corporate company, in which, he won one million pounds and then victim’s email ID is sought.

When the victim replies, he would be sent an e-mail, stating that he should appoint a UK-based lawyer to represent him to complete the process. The accused provide lawyers’ names and takes Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000,” the IPS officer said adding that a fake Coca Cola company’s letter-head, mentioning the prize money, was recovered from them.

For tax payments in the UK, they further seek Rs 1.5 lakh. Once the payments are made, they say the cash has arrived in India and the victim should pay to RBI and Customs Department for clearance of the money. In this way, the victim shells out at least four to five lakh (rupees) over a period of time.”

The men are being held in Mumbai. The 419 scam has been around forever and while you would think most Internet users would have heard of it by now and wouldn’t be fooled, many countries in which Internet access was a luxury reserved for the very rich are now seeing it opened up to the masses as it becomes more and more affordable. This means millions of new users, and that’s what scammers are counting on and what is likely to be the reason this ring focused on users in India. It will probably be a very long time before the 419 scam wears out its welcome.