eSIM Swapping Fraud: Cyber Criminals Targeting Airtel Customers in Hyderabad

Hyderabad witnessed three back to back cases of cyberfraud wherein criminals targeted Airtel customers promising them eSIM connection that led to a fraud of more than 16 lakh Rs. In the wake of the frauds, the Hyderabad cyber crime police station issued an advisory alerting Airtel customers regarding the fraudsters befooling people in the name of the eSIM connection.

S. Appalanaidu, a resident of Miyapur, Hyderabad received a message on 11th July informing him that if he fails to update his KYC details, his SIM card would get blocked. “Dear Customer Your SIM Card Will Be Blocked in 24 hours Please Update Your eKYC verification Thanks”. The message read.

Later, he received a phone call from a person acting to be a customer care executive for Airtel who asked Mr. Appalanaidu to forward the e-mail address sent by him to #121 i.e., Airtel customer care number, in order to get his KYC updated online. Reportedly, after forwarding the email-id, Mr. Appalanaidu got an auto-generated SMS from the service provider for registering the email address for his contact number. Once the e-Sim request was forwarded by him to Airtel along with the email address, he received another auto-generated SMS handing him the e-SIM enabled handset and asking to proceed with the same. After that, he received a Google view form link on which he submitted the name of his bank and forwarded it to the caller. Immediately after his SIM card got blocked and a sum of Rs. 9,20,897 had been deducted from his bank account. Following the incident, Mr. Appalanaidu filed a complaint on 14th July urging for necessary actions to be taken by cyber police.

Similarly, the criminals cheated two other Airtel users for amounts – Rs. 5,94,799 and 1,03,990 respectively. In the light of that, Hyderabad cyber police issued an advisory to warn customers about how fraudsters are sending a heap of messages and calling them claiming to be Airtel customer care executives and asking them to send requests for the activation of eSIM and eSIM enables devices, which is just another way of cheating customers and tricking them into providing enough personal and financial details for fraudsters to capitalize on. ,