Landlords beware! Men posing as house-hunting army officers in Vizag may be cybercriminals

Cybercriminals posing as Indian Army officers are duping the people in Vizag city under the guise of renting property.

Police said that some people in Vizag city have listed their property for rent on multiple real-estate websites. The modus operandi of the fraudsters includes cheating the landlords of huge money.

Sample this: Noticing the advertisements, a fraudster identifying himself as an Army officer who is to be posted in Vizag, calls up the landlord and expresses intent to take a house on rent.

When the house owner asks him to transfer the deposit and first rent installment, he quickly says someone from his defence establishment would get in touch for further transactions.

The fraudster then poses as a man from the defence establishment and calls up the house owner and asks him to transfer some money (Rs 1 to Rs10) to his UPI wallet to establish a contact. The owner transfers money to the UPI wallet and the fraudster returns a double amount to the owner. Later he again asks the owner to transfer some money and promises to return the double amount plus the payment required.

After transferring the money, the fraudster keeps telling the owner that the transaction had failed and made them transfer more money. The fraudster even shares fake identity documents with the victims to win their trust.

In another modus operandi, fraudsters are putting images of fully furnished flats and houses on websites. After collecting the advance payments from the people, who contact them to rent the establishments, the fraudsters disappear.

The cases concerning courier services and second-hand sales in reputed sites are piling up at the stations in the state. New methods of crime are keeping the police on their toes.

City police chief Ch Srikanth said that fraudsters are finding new methods and modus operandi to con gullible persons. More than 30 such new cases have been reported in Vizag city and an investigation is on to identify the fraudsters.

Cybercrime police station in Vizag city witnessed 316 cases in 2021 and the fraudsters plundered Rs 7.9 crore. Vizag city witnessed over 300 cybercrime cases from January to August 2022 and the property lost was over Rs 5.2 crore.