Beware of fraud calls

Today I read an interesting article saying that in the last month over 1200 fraud calls were reported to the crime branch. I'm sure there will be a lot more where people don't report them. This is completely insane to see how these fraud people try to grow and try to cheat others and loot money. Elderly people are people who are afraid and usually fall into this trap.

How does this happen?

Someone randomly called us told us our name and asked if we were sending any package somewhere. If we say no, they won't leave us and start to get to the details. In my case, I said no and they started saying that someone had sent a package to Taiwan in my name and with this phone number as a reference. When I received the first call, I almost believed that it was true and I started engaging.

They say that the package had drugs, weapons, and other things that are illegal items and the issue has been reported to the police department. In my case, they said that my case was reported to the Mumbai police department and I had to immediately go to Mumbai to clear off the case. I did not have any doubt about them until this point. Now after saying all these, they said they would read out what was there in the package and asked me to listen. Even now I have no doubt. But now they asked me to repeat what they were saying. That's when I got that it was a fraud and I got suspicious.

Source

I then said that I wouldn't be repeating anything and that if the police wanted to arrest me for this, they could reach out to me directly and arrest me. Then later they disconnected the call.

It is very common it seems

I did not know that it was a very common thing. I thought that it was a one-off thing that I received such a call. I did spend a lot of time answering their call and trying to understand the situation. Later after I found out that it was not just me but was a very common thing that was happening in Tamil Nadu, I understood everything. Thanks to Truecaller it is capable of removing such spam calls or at least indicating that they are not legitimate calls.

I was surprised to read that many people received the calls saying that the person was from a FedEx courier. They usually ask us to pay some money to them to solve this case without requiring us to travel or report to the police station. I was wondering what would happen if we went to cybercrime or a nearby police station regarding this. It was an unnecessary stress for me. I was relieved when I saw many people sharing the same experience and this news about 1200 such registered calls was shocking.

Two days back I received a similar fraud call. I thought it was a genuine call and I started talking and later towards the end, I found out that it was a fraud call. We have to make sure people in the house are aware of such scams and they don't fall into any traps.