Social media remains rife with `25 lakh KBC lottery fraud

Srinagar, Nov 23: A voice message is circulating widely on WhatsApp and other social media platforms claiming that the Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) is rewarding Rs 25 lakh as lottery cash prize to lucky winners.

According to the message, in order to claim the cash prize the person must contact the “bank manager” whose contact number is given in the same message.
However, Cyber Police officials here said that they have found that this viral message is nothing but a fraudulent scam to steal money in the name of lottery reward.
Since the last few days many people in Kashmir are receiving a message on Whatsapp claiming that the Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) management is organising a lottery and is rewarding 25,00,000 rupees as the lottery cash prize.

Audio call recordings are being sent through WhatsApp where a man proclaiming himself as a customer office personnel from KBC was greeting a person for winning the Rs 25 lakh rupees lottery from KBC. All these messages are sharing different contact numbers for receiving the prize money.
Cyber police officials remarked that it is a fraudulent message, wherein scammers cheat the users by demanding an initial deposit to claim the lottery amount.

They said that once the victim deposits that money, they start demanding more money on one pretext or another. “The fraudsters insist on communicating only through WhatsApp. They induce the victim to deposit money in various bank accounts and the entire fraud goes on for several weeks and even months for as long as they can keep inducing the victim to deposit money,” officials said, adding that after some time they start telling the victim that the lottery amount has been increased further to

Rs 45 lakhs, then to Rs 75 lakhs, so on and so forth so as to keep the victim engaged and interested. “Finally, when the victim starts insisting on getting the money or refuses to pay more, they stop calling him/her and discontinue the WhatsApp numbers that were being used in the fraud’.”

IDENTIFY SUCH SCAMS:

Any message that talks about financial gains should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Messages from an unknown number should be taken as a warning sign. Most of these messages come with grammatical issues and wrong English and should be avoided.

WAYS TO STAY SAFE:
As soon as you suspect a message to be a scam, block the number. Never open messages from a suspicious phone number. In this case a non-Indian number. Never click on

suspicious links or share OTP with anyone.