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| - Fact Check: Don't touch this "Jio scratch card" hoping for a free gift - you'll end up scratching your head in despair
The offer floating around, looks genuine at first glance. It is in the form of a scratch card, complete with the logo of Jio, a photo of Mukesh Ambani saying Jio has completed seven years, and a promise of Rs 999 gift.
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India Today Fact Check
This is an imposter website. Reliance Jio is not running any such scheme.
If an offer looks too good to be true, it’s most likely just that - fake.
Is Reliance Jio giving away Rs 999 to everyone on the occasion of their seventh anniversary? Well, you may have already guessed it's junk. But if you think, this is one of those numerous fraudulent websites which cast their net on social media hoping to scrape some personal data - read on. This one is much more serious. If you’re not careful, you may actually end up paying Rs.999 to the fraudster.
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What the offer looks like:
The offer floating around, looks genuine at first glance. It is in the form of a scratch card, complete with the logo of Jio, a photo of Mukesh Ambani saying Jio has completed seven years, and a promise of Rs 999 gift. All you need to do to get lucky, is to scratch the card and claim your prize.
As soon as you scratch the card, it congratulates you for winning Rs.999. If you do not want to take the risk of navigating through a fraudulent website, find below the screen recording to see how it actually looks and what happens next.
Ultimately, the offer card wants you to “click here to transfer the prize money into your account”. The moment you click on it, you end up being redirected to the Paytm app (if you’ve the app already installed on your phone). But we’ll come back to it later on.
Let’s first try to peek at what happens behind the scenes.
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If you pay attention to the url before the offer opens the Paytm app, you can see that the address looks somewhat weird. The url of the website is ‘cartbag.xyz’. Why on earth would Jio use this url for any of their offers? First red flag. You will also notice that the website has been designed to work properly only on mobile phones and the links don’t work properly if you open it on a computer. There are two reasons for that. First, you don’t install Paytm on your computer where the links want to redirect you. Second, it’s easy to investigate a weblink on a computer.
The archived version of this website can be seen here.
It is important to note that the website ‘cartbag.xyz’ uses the same royal blue color scheme as the official Jio website jio.com. That could be one of the reasons many people are assuming this to be a genuine offer and sharing it on WhatsApp as well as Facebook.
What does the website ‘cartbag.xyz’ reveal:
We found that the website was created barely three months ago. Disposing a fraudulent website soon after duping people is a common practice. According to GoDaddy Whois, the domain ‘cartbag.xyz’ was created on September 26, 2022.
Here is the trap:
Assuming that you fell for the bait and clicked the link to “transfer Rs.999 into your bank account”, this is how things unfold.
As we discussed earlier, it automatically opens the Paytm app installed on your phone. You’ll notice, the amount is pre-filled with ‘Rs. 999’. Just below the amount, a message deceptively says,“TRANSFER-TO-YOUR-BANK’. The moment someone punches their four-digit UPI pin - just the opposite happens. You end up paying Rs 999 to one “Lakhi Mallick”.
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Wondering who Lakhi Mallick is? We managed to unmask the conman - at least partially.
We have all been warned by our banks that we DO NOT need to punch the secret UPI pin to “receive money”. It is not difficult to imagine there would be many gullible people falling into this cleverly laid trap.
The man/woman behind the scam:
Hidden within the link, which directs you to the Paytm app and opens the payment window, is the UPI ID where the payment is going in case you made the mistake of keying your UPI pin.
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The ID is ‘8327049816@okbizaxis’. The name associated with this Id is ‘Lakhi Repair Shop'. The blue tick along with the name indicates that it is a verified account which has completed the KYC process.
As per the ‘National Payment Corporation Of India’ '@okbizaxis’ is the format of Google Pay UPI Ids. We cross-checked on Google pay and found that the UPI ID ‘8327049816@okbizaxis’ is indeed associated with “Lakhi Repair Shop”.
We further scrutinized the phone number ‘8327049816’ through Paytm and True caller apps. This is most probably a Vodafone Idea (Vi) number registered in West Bengal & Andaman Nicobar circle. According to Paytm, this No. and the associated account belong to one Lakhi Mallick.
By the way, Jio is not celebrating its seventh anniversary. It completed six years on September 5 this year.
Obviously, there is no such free gift offer on the official website of Jio. And the only person getting lucky by scratching the card is the conman - Lakhi Mallick.
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