According to the Cyber Crime Unit of Delhi Police, conmen send WhatsApp messages to claiming that their mobile number has won a lottery jointly organized by Kaun Banega Crorepati and Reliance Jio worth Rs. 25 lakhs. 

Then they ask for your phone number to process said amount. Then the unsuspecting victims are asked to pay a certain refundable amount required to process the lottery, GST and some other charges. 

Once the money is deposited, they contact you again asking for some more money and they insist that the victims only contact them through WhatsApp.

According to Delhi Police: 

They induce the victim to deposit money in various bank accounts and the entire fraud goes on for several weeks and even months for as long as they can keep inducing the victim to deposit money. After some time, they start telling the victim that the lottery amount has been increased further to Rs. 45 lakhs, then to Rs. 75 lakhs, so on and so forth so as to keep the victim engaged and interested. Finally, when the victim starts insisting on getting the money or refuses to pay more, they stop calling him/her and discontinue the WhatsApp numbers that were being used in the fraud.   

And if you believe this is too far fetched to be true, I have fetched some new articles for you to read. 

This is just one example. A simple Google search will lead you into a tunnel filled with people who have been duped of thousands, even lakhs of their hard-earned money, sometimes their whole life savings. 

And while you might not think of yourself as someone who could be fooled into falling for such scams, you might know people who do. Your parents, grandparents, especially uncles and aunties on WhatsApp groups who send Good morning texts are at high risk of falling for this. 

This is actually a major issue. So much so, that even the government has issued warnings and safety measures against such scams. 

Delhi Police has also issued some guidelines or safety precautions that you might want to share with people you believe to be at risk of falling for such conmen. You can read them here. 

1. Any message informing that you have won a lottery or a prize, is, in all likelihood, a fraud.  

2. A closer look into such messages will show poor drafting, grammatical errors, and other glaring signs that the message is not genuine.  

3. These frauds exploit your greed. You forget to take basic precautions such as discussing with family members, verifying the information through alternate means, etc., as you get blinded by your greed.  

4. In any genuine lottery or prize, the tax component and other charges are cut from the prize money and the winner gets the deducted amount. So ask yourself the question that why you have to pay these charges in advance to get the so-called lottery money. This is because it is a fraud and there is no money that you have won.  

5. In the caller insists on maintaining secrecy, it is a sign that there is something fishy about the whole thing.  

So, savdhaan rahiye, satark rahiye. Jai Hind!