Fraudster Tried To Scam This Man With UPI Money Transfer, Here Is How He Detected It

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has undoubtedly revolutionised the way Indians transfer money, be it at the neighbourhood tea stall or to friends and family.

But the rapid adoption of UPI including by people who are not tech savvy has also given a goldmine of opportunity for fraudsters.

Hardik Pandya, a senior vice president at Unacademy in Bengaluru recently posted on social media how he was approached by a scamster, but managed to evade the attempt after noticing some red flags.

Started with OLX ad

According to Pandya, it all began after he posted an ad on OLX to sell his iPad.

Soon he was contacted by one Dilip Vikas who expressed his interest in buying the iPad.

According to Pandya, soon the conversation switched to WhatsApp and Vikas initially transferred Re 1 to confirm the legitimacy of the buyer's account.

Vikas then informed Pandya that he transferred the amount that the seller was demanding (Rs 16,000) to his account and even sent him a screenshot confirming the transaction.

Transferred Rs 10,000 more by mistake?

But there was a problem, instead of the Rs 16,000 Pandya was asking for the iPad Vikas had 'inadvertently' transferred Rs 26,000 to his account.

After informing Pandya about the mistake, Vikas requested the seller to send the Rs 10,000 back to his account.

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On closer inspection, Pandya noticed that the message he received about the amount being credited to his account came from the scamster's number and not from the bank.

"Obviously, it doesn’t take much to know this raised all the alarms from the get go.

But the imitation transaction messages sent manually by him was the funniest part!," he wrote.

How others reacted

Many on X pointed out that OLX was full of such scams including by some people pretending to be army officers.

While one person commented that Pandya got richer by Re 1, another suggested that he should SMS him saying Rs 10000 is credited to his account.

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