In this era of digitization, cases of cyber fraud or online scams are heard every day in India. According to Microsoft’s 2021 Global Tech Support Scam Research Report, it is shown that consumers in India experienced relatively high “scam encounter rate” of 69% in the last 12 months, which has decreased just by one percent from what was experienced in 2018.
Instead of regular reporting by various media channels and awareness programs by the government against online scams, people in India are easily duped. Our team has worked on one such online scam which is active since 3 months and is cheating common people in the name of CISF officers. Here we have tried to cover the details that you must keep in mind before buying anything on social media or any other marketing website.
While surfing Facebook, we found a post by the name of Amit Kumar, who was calling himself CISF personnel and was willing to sell furniture and other items which is only 6 months old.
When our team tried to dig deeper about him and searched more about Amit Kumar on Facebook, we came across several pages by the name of Amit Kumar which were created on different dates. Listing each of them.
2. Amit Kumar
5. Amit Kumar
6. Amit Kumar
7. Amit
8. Amit kumar
On analyzing the contents of each page, it was found that all the pages were made to sell furniture and other items in the name of a CISF personnel named Amit Kumar, who is willing to sell these items due to his duty transfer.
The contradictory thing we realized in the post was that the personnel name and content writing patterns are the same, but the product images and their rewards differ in each post. The WhatsApp number given in the post also varies from post to post for further contact. Using Truecaller, our team tried to find out under what name this number is saved.
| S. No. | Page Name | Page Created on | Posted about items on | Whatsapp Number | Truecaller Description |
| 1 | Amit Kumar CISF Officer | 15 Sept 2021 | 15 Sept, 2021 at 17:12 | 9861502493 | Amit Kumar Orissa, India airport Indian Army airport service  |
| 2 | Amit Kumar | 6 Oct 2021 | 6 Oct 2021 at 18:35 | 9583741647 | Amit Kumar Airport Service, CISF Officer, Orissa, India  |
| 3 | Amit Kumar 8337920112 | 6 Oct 2021 | 6 Oct 2021 at 22:49 | 8337920112 | Amit Kumar Orissa, India  |
| 4 | Amit CISF Officer | 5 Sept 2021 | 5 Sept | 9692859897 | Bablu Kumar Indian Officer, [email protected] Tamil Nadu, 126, Chennai, India  |
| 5 | Amit Kumar | 18 Sept 2021 | 18 Sept 2021 9:43 | 9178048559 | Amit Kumar Orissa, India  |
| 6 | Amit Kumar | 5 September, 2021 | 5 Sept, 2021 | 9692609841 | Amit Kumar Indian, Bhartiya Se na, India Cisf  |
| 7 | Amit | 24 Sept, 2021 | 24 Sept, 2021 17:39 | 9178048559 | Amit Kumar Orissa, India |
| 8 | Amit kumar | 30 Sept, 2021 | 30 Sept 2021 15:50 | 9692156752 | Amit Kumar Cisf Orissa, India  |
On analyzing the details of various numbers used by Amit Kumar through different pages, it was found that this page creation was started by him on 5th September 2021 and that too by using the number of Bablu Kumar. Then later, he learned about it and on the same day i.e., 5th September created another page using another number in the name of Amit Kumar. Soon after, he followed the same trend and opened 6 more accounts on 15th, 18th, 24th, 30th September and 6th October. Two accounts were opened on 6th October using different numbers.
Checking the Profile Picture used in these Accounts:
Two times, he has used the profile picture i.e., in pages created on 5th Sept and 18th Sept 2021. Let us look for its verification:
Profile picture used in 5th Sept, 2021 page
On performing reverse image search of the image, it was found that it is taken from an Instagram channel named indian_military_power which was uploaded it on 9th June, 2021.
Profile picture used in page created on 18 Sept, 2021
On performing reverse image search, it was found that already there are complaints filed against the person using this picture.
A twitter account ‘Jyoti Lal Lodhi’ has used this image and called him a fraud person in her tweet as is shown below:
One more complaint against the culprit has been filed at consumer complaints forum by RajeshK95051311 on Jul 2,2020
Thus, this person is duping people since 2020 by using picture of a person dressed in Indian Army clothes.
Taking a look at the post and photos of furniture that culprit has attached with it:
Here is the example of one post made by the culprit through the page created on 15 September 2021
On performing reverse search of the image it was found almost all the pictures are taken from marketing sites Indiamart, OLX, Flipkart and bench online.
| Image attached with Facebook posts | Image Taken From |
1. Almirah  | Flipkart  |
2. Sofa  | Bench Online |
3. Washing Machine | OLX |
4. AC | India mart  |
As on reverse searching the profile picture of pages of Amit Kumar, we came across the consumer complaints portal, there our team found one more grievances filed by Kunal KK against this account on August 30,2021.
On checking the WhatsApp number through Truecaller, it was found that one number is registered in the name of Bablu Kumar. We tried to find him on Facebook, and were surprised to find that there are 5 pages active in the name of Bablu Kumar which were created for the same reason to sell products. In these accounts too, Bablu Kumar was describing himself as a CISF jawan and is selling his furniture and other items due to duty transfer.
Doing the analysis of these 5 accounts in the same manner as we did for Amit Kumar, it was found he has also used 5 different WhatsApp numbers. But this time, the people has marked his number as a spam on truecaller.
| S. No. | Page Name | Page Created On | Posted about items on | WhatsApp Number | Truecaller Description |
| 1 | Bablu Kumar | 14 Sept 2021 | 14 Sept 2021 | 9348675186 | Bablu Kumar Military  |
| 2 | Bablu Kumar | 15 Sept 2021 | 15 Sept 2021 at 13:09 | 9707636987 | Bablu Kumar 14 Spam Reports  |
| 3 | Bablu Kumar | 5 Oct 2021 | 5 Oct 2021 at 8:15 | 9692869745 | Bablu Kumar Cisf Officer  |
| 4 | Bablu Kumar | 27 Sept 2021 | 27 Sept 2021 at 17:34 | 9827026517 | Bablu Kumar Military  |
| 5 | Bablu Kumar | 1 Oct 2021 | 6 Oct 2021 at 22:40 | 9692858610 | Bablu Kumar Travel & Tourism  |
Again the same pattern of posts appears in these accounts and it can be said that the same culprit is handling all these pages or it can be a teamwork led by one person.
Soon we found many more accounts in the name of Dilip Bhai CISF, Avdhesh Kumar, Manjeet Singh, Neeraj Kumar and Mohananda Pathak, posting in the same manner as CISF personnel who want to sell products due to duty transfer.
This case study was shown so that you should be alert to accounts like “Amit Kumar”, “Bablu Kumar” etc., which are present in social media with the sole purpose of duping people’s hard earned money. It is our responsibility to do proper person verification before purchasing any product online.
