Two more cheated in QR code scam

More cases of people losing money after falling prey to QR code scamsters are coming to light. Two city-based software engineers were allegedly cheated of ₹1.17 lakh in separate incidents when they were trying to sell old furniture online.

Mahesh Prasad, 33, in his complaint to the police on Saturday, said he had put an online advertisement to sell a sofa and storage cabins. A few hours later, a man called Mr. Prasad and offered to buy the items and said he would the make payment online.

He sent a QR code to Mr. Prasad asking him to scan it so that the money could be sent to him. As soon as the QR code was scanned, ₹66,000 was deducted from his account, Mr. Prasad said in his complaint.

In the other case, Gajanana Hanagund, a software engineer from Ramamurthy Nagar, was duped after he put an advertisement to sell his his sofa set for ₹8,000. A man calling himself Mishra responded to the advert and sent a QR code to Mr. Hanagund. Soon after he scanned QR code, ₹51,000 got debited from his account

Both Mr. Prasad and Mr. Hanagund have provided the phone numbers of the callers to the police, who suspect that the accused might have been using SIM cards taken using fake documents. Efforts are on to track down the bank account numbers to which the money was credited.

In the last one week, as many as 10 cases related to QR code scam have been reported from in and around the city . This is a novel way of online fraud seen in other South Asian countries as well, a senior police officer said.