=> ISLAMABAD – With the deteriorated law and order si
ISLAMABAD – With the deteriorated law and order situation, swindlers are on a free ride as they are trapping innocent people by making surprise phone calls informing them that they have ‘won a huge prize’.
Like many other popular scams of housing, stock market, internet, a group of people has innovated a new style of cheating through mobile phones in the name of Pakistan’s largest cellular company Mobilink.
Interestingly these cheaters talk in such a polite way to convince the listeners to follow their instructions. “I received a call from a phone number of Mobilink company few days ago and the caller informed me that I have won a prize (Rs one million) in a lucky draw held in Dubai,” Asif Mehmood, one of the affectees of this scam informed TheNation.
He also said that the caller introduced himself as Irfan and was Business Executive of Mobilink. He also requested him to provide all his details like home address and identity card number, etc, the victim further said.
He asked Asif to talk to a senior official of Mobilink regarding the delivery of the prize money and gave him not only the number of that official but also a lucky coupon number.
When Asif contacted on the given cell number, a person named Syed Zubair Shah also confirmed that he has won the aforesaid prize money but before receiving that he (Asif) needs purchasing Mobilink cards having worth Rs 3,300. He also asked Asif to give him the serial number of these cards to process the cheque of one million rupees to his account as per the criteria of Mobilink prize branch situated in Dubai.
Asif rushed to the shop, bought the scratch cards and shared their serial numbers with Zubair who neither called to Asif again nor prize money was transferred to his account, rather he lost the Rs 3,300 as well.
When, later, Asif contacted to Mobilink help line to know about his prize, the customer relation officer told him those people don’t belong to Mobilink and are fraud and the company has no such scheme.
Manager public relation Mobilink Omar Manzur while talking to TheNation said that Mobilink has run an awareness advertisement and media briefing campaign in order to inform customers about this situation.
While replying to a question Omar said, “We maintain a database of such callers and have blocked their numbers. If the culprits contact us for restoration of the number, they are advised to submit an apology with a copy of their original NIC at any of our offices along with returning the balance to the rightful users”.
He further said, “As soon as such a complaint is reported to us, we immediately verify the claim from our systems and if found to be true we block the number and update it in our database”.
Source: The Nation
Date:1/12/2008
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