Scammed Out Of Rs 5 Lakh: Man’s Refund Quest Leads To Uber Ride Disaster!
A man reportedly lost his Rs 500,000 when he sought help from Uber customer service after charging a Rs 100 tip on top of the taxi fare. Now, this situation isn’t as straightforward as it seems, because the “customer service” number he dialed was fake.
According to the FIR obtained by IANS, the victim Pradeep Chowdhary took a taxi to Gurugram. His total fare was Rs 205, but Uber charged him Rs 318, including an extra tip for the driver.
Based on the FIR, Chowdhary said the taxi driver told him he could get a refund if he contacted Uber’s customer service. To do so, he tried to find a customer service number on Google, but this is where things turned sour. “The driver suggested I could get the money back by calling customer service. I got the number ‘6289339056’ from Google which directed to ‘6294613240’ and then to Rakesh Mishra to ‘9832459993’.”
The victim was then asked to download the “Rust Desk app” from the Google Play Store. For those who don’t know, Rust Desk is an open source remote access software that allows another party to control your device. This is intended for support-related tasks, but as in this case, it can also be used for nefarious reasons. “He then asked me to open PayTM and send a message ‘rfnd 112’ for the refund amount. When asked about providing my phone number, he claimed it was for account verification,” Chowdhary said.
Moments later, the man lost his hard-earned money to scammers.
How did a fake Uber support number end up in a Google search?
Most people make the mistake of blindly believing what results are shown in search engine results. In Google’s case, it allows users to add information to results, contribute to business pages, and more. Some advanced scammers may even use search engine optimization (SEO) to rank their fake support pages.
If people contact the wrong numbers or emails, they usually end up talking to scammers and fall into a tricky scam scheme.
To ensure this, never blindly call any number you come across on the platform. This can be anything – courier numbers, auto repair shops, Google support and, as seen in this case, Uber/Ola support too. Also, make sure you contact support through the official apps of the service you’re using. Uber has its own support section in particular, which you can visit to reach the support staff.
