Claim
Dear customer Your Electricity’s power will be disconnected. Tonight at 9.30 pm from electricity office. Because your previous month bill was not update. Please immediately contact with our electricity’s officer 6380023323 Thank you.
Rating
Explanation
Messages similar to the one above are being spread in various cities of North India across various states. Typically, most of the Electricity Boards send their consumers a text message to remind them to pay their bills. It would usually contain the URL link if the state’s Electricity Board has online payment option. Many users have uploaded screenshots of similar messages that they got.
What’s the truth?
The message itself raises a warning sign. The message is bereft of any grammatical accuracy and there seems to be no regard for punctuation, whatsoever. So, we browsed through the internet and found that this is a scam that has been going on for quite some time. Many warnings have been issued by various police departments, most notably Maharashtra Cyber Police tweeted the consumers to be aware of such scams in May 2022.
Be aware of Electricity bill frauds.#cybersecurity #fraud #CyberCrimeAwareness #cybercrime #BeSafe #Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/F2HPZt9ewm
— Maharashtra Cyber (@MahaCyber1) May 31, 2022
Pithoragarh Police from the State of Uttarakhand also made similar awareness tweet on 14th September 2022. Various news reports from many reputed news outlets have covered this particular type of scam, which has been going on for months across various cities.
A senior Income Tax official from Bengaluru, Sunitha Premkumar, has lost almost Rs.5 lakhs in the scam. Ms.Sunitha received a phone call from a person claiming to be Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Besom) and requested her to download an app. Ms.Sunitha followed the instructions given to her and transferred Rs.20 from the app. As soon as the transfer was made, Rs.4.9 lakhs from her savings bank account was deducted.
Conclusion
This message is definitely part of a scam that has duped many people across various cities and states in India. Police departments and Electricity Boards from various states have issued awareness notifications regarding this scam.
Proof Links
beware-of-phishing-attacks-in-name-of-unpaid-eb-bills
Beware! That unpaid power, telecom bill payment message on your phone may be a scamster’s trick
Electricity Bill scam alert: Beware of WhatsApp message asking you to clear your bill
I-T officer among two victims of electricity bill payment scam
