BEWARE! Man lost Rs. 64 lakh from bank account in online scam; how phone hacking was done

tech.hindustantimes.com:

A businessman based in Jaipur has lost Rs. 64 lakh in a mysterious manner. The online scam has left the city police to consider the possibility of the man's mobile phone being compromised in a mysterious manner. Shockingly, this was not a cybercrime carried out in minutes. The entire mobile phone scam took place over as many as two days without anyone knowing that it was happening! It all began after the businessman noticed that his smartphone suddenly lost network connectivity on Friday, February 11. The series of events that followed after that has left both the victim and the police puzzled and raised suspicion of it being a sophisticated SIM swapping scam.

These online scams, also known as SIM swapping scams, happen when cybercriminals first load malware on a user's phone to find out the basic personal and financial information stored in the smartphone. Then they call up the victim and pretend to be a representative of the network provider and ask for personal information. If the user is gullible enough, he may actually provide this information to the caller. That is when he seals his own fate and money loss is bound to happen. Once the fraudsters get this information, they call up the telecom network provider’s office and put in a request for a new SIM card and they prove their identity based on the information they received from the victim. Once it is done, the victim’s mobile loses connectivity and the scammer gains access to the phone, through which they can transfer the money to themselves as now all financial SMS and OTPs are controlled by them. While it can’t be confirmed if this is exactly what happened in this cybercrime case, the online frauds that have happened are of very similar nature.

The online scam