Electricity consumers in India are becoming a target for scammers making them into transferring money. Fraudsters are sending a message through SMS or WhatsApp to users saying their bill was due and if they don’t not pay it, their connection will be cut.
It contains a phone number that essentially allows the scammer to establish a verbal connection with the user and eventually convince them to transfer money.
In the last few days, some of the victims of these scams have lost lakhs of rupees.
Many user reports on Twitter suggest that there has an increase in electricity bill scams across India.
Scammers are targeting users in states including Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, and Odisha.
The fake message pretends to be coming from the electricity distribution company and asks users to dial a particular phone number, which is falsely claim to be of an electricity officer, to avoid disconnection of power supply.
It also contains a random amount that is shame as the pending electricity bill of the recipient.
@MVVNLHQ kindly look into the matter and do needful. #upe300622
— UPPCL (@UPPCLLKO) June 30, 2022
The phone numbers given became unavailable shortly after the message was sent.
In some cases, scammers were seen sending the fake electricity bill alert messages using SMS headers to avoid getting caught at first sight and target a large number of people at once.
The headers were not the ones that are associate with official electricity distributors.
Scammers in other cases were found to be using disposable phone numbers over WhatsApp to reach their targets.
Agencies including Maharashtra Cyber have inform consumers to not pay attention to any such messages.
Be aware of Electricity bill frauds.#cybersecurity #fraud #CyberCrimeAwareness #cybercrime #BeSafe #Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/F2HPZt9ewm
— Maharashtra Cyber (@MahaCyber1) May 31, 2022
Recent media reports suggest that the scammers were able to prey on some consumers and looted lakhs of rupees on a false account to clear their pending electricity bills.
