How A Woman Lost Rs 97,000 To Food App Account Hackers

Delhi police have recently arrested two cyber criminals accused of tricking a 26-year-old woman from Sultanpur into breaching her food delivery app account, Swiggy, through an automated Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and robbing Rs 97,197 from the victim's account linked to the food delivery app. 

The two scammers from Gurgaon, identified as Anike Kalra (25) who had earlier worked as a delivery agent in Zomato and Swiggy, and Himanshu Kumar (23) met each other through Telegram and joined hands in scamming numerous people whose bank credentials were linked to their Swiggy accounts. 

How A Woman Lost Rs 97,000 To Swiggy Account Hackers

The victim woman, who lost Rs 97,197 from her Lazy App account, lodged a complaint with the police informing them about two strangers who looted her money using her Swiggy account, prompting an immediate police investigation against the two hackers. 

According to the police, the fraudsters used a special phone call system called Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and made a fake call late at night to the victim woman. According to the woman's complaint, the call sounded like it was from Swiggy's official system, but it was later revealed by a police investigation that the call was a fake automated call to trick people.

The fake automated call was designed to make people believe that their Swiggy accounts were in danger, and so as to protect their accounts, they might need to provide the company officials with credentials for their Swiggy accounts. 

The woman was left perplexed and worried and fell prey to the trick of the scammers giving away her credentials, which led the fraudsters to easily log into her Swiggy account and place orders through Swiggy's online grocery mart, which was nearly worth Rs 1 lakh. 

One of the two accused, Kalra, a former delivery boy of the food delivery app, told The New Indian Express that they brought groceries online using the victim's account at discounted rates using her Lazy Pay account linked to the app and resold them for profit, saving 5–10 percent of profits per item. 

Kalra shared that he met Kumar on Telegram who had data to access the list of people's Swiggy accounts who had linked their bank credentials, like credit cards, debit cards, or internet banking accounts, to the app. Kalra then left his job as a delivery agent and joined hands with Kumar to cheat people. 

Both Kalra and Kumar then began breaching these people's Swiggy accounts using fake pre-recorded automated calls claiming to be Swiggy's official system to steal users' confidential data as they feared their Swiggy account to be in danger and gave away their details.

The two scammers who purchased goods from these hacked accounts and sold the groceries for profits are now arrested by the Delhi police.