Beware of this OLX scam! 😱

In these frauds, a person (fraudster) usually posing as an Army/Paramilitary personnel, contacts the person who is trying to sell a product on websites or apps such as OLX, Quikr, etc. and agrees to pay the asked price for the said good. The fraudster claims that he is posted in some inaccessible area of the country and hence, can neither come to take the physical delivery, nor can he pay the money in cash and hence, needs to transfer the money online. After striking a deal, he then sends a fake screenshot (generated using PayTM Spoof App or similar Apps) to the seller purporting to show that the said amount has been transferred to the seller’s PayTM account. However, when the seller claims that the money has not been received, the fraudster claims that there is some technical issue and then sends a QR code to the victim. He guides the victim through the process and makes him/her upload the said screenshot using Google Pay. As soon as the victim uploads the screenshot and enters the UPI Pin on Google Pay, money, instead of being credited, gets debited from the account of the victim.
When the victim brings this up with the fraudster, he claims that this was a mistake and that now he is sending a QR code for twice the amount (to account for the money that has been mistakenly debited from the victim’s account) and as soon as the victim scans the QR code, the amount again gets debited from his/her account. The fraudster repeats this exercise as many times as he can, with the victim and then cuts the connection. In this way, the victim ends up losing several thousand or even lakhs of rupees while trying to sell a product online on OLX/Quikr, etc.