Bengaluru-based fraud data insight and analytics startup, TrustCheckr in its new report said, “Over 41% of fraud distribution accounted in the eastern region of India.”
“The most number of UPI scams take place on payment apps and market places with 41% of fraud distribution accounted in eastern parts of India – West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Assam, Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Himachal Pradesh, and Sikkim,” the report said.
“The top frauds take place in KYC, fake cash-back, frauds through digital wallets, fake-selling, QR codes, UPI phishing, lottery scams, and financial fraud on social media,” TrustChecker added.
The report also revealed that the top scamsters were from Patna, Chandigarh, Kolkata, and Meerut for one of the top payment apps at 15%. Most QR Code scams originate from Assam, accounting for 20% of the total distribution.
Interestingly, it was observed that many fraudster profiles claimed to be army men; this is most likely the result of border clashes between India and China due to which there was an upsurge in patriotic sentiments among the general public and the fraudsters looked to cash in on the sentiment by playing the emotional card. In QR code frauds, most fraudsters posed themselves as army men selling something on marketplaces.
“TrustCheckr identified over 1 million frauds together in B2B and B2C in the last 15 months – 25% scams in KYC and 20% in QR codes, while B2B scams were largely done with 30% fake identities and 25% synthetic identity frauds. TrustCheckr’s findings are based on 350,000 data points collected from top hashtags, 200+ Twitter handles, partner data shared over the last 12 months, and proprietary Social scanning technology of TrustCheckr,” the report said.
Speaking on the released report, Adhip Ramesh, Founder, TrustCheckr, said, “The common thread of digital payment frauds is phone number and email address. We check fraud signals with phone/email, validate the customer authenticity using historical fraud trends, fraud data sets, history and provide simple REST APIs with phone numbers as input, integration in less than 48 hours.”
Shivraj Harsha, Co-founder, TrustCheckr, warns against callers who agree to pay any price for products. “Digital scams can trick users as they may appear as legitimate by revealing a few authentic details about them to earn their trust and move money. If it sounds too good to be true, one should be careful about such transactions. Our score parameters can give a go-ahead or early warning signs of fraud.”