Online frauds are increasing like wild fire. Fraudsters use various tricks to cheat people online. You might have read the news which talks about illegal money transactions, hacking of bank accounts and so on. Here in this blog, we are going to talk about fraud related to the EPF account of employees.
As we all know EPF or Employee Provident Fund is a retirement fund available for salaried people. To this account, the employee has to contribute a certain percentage of his/her salary each month and an equal amount will be contributed by the employer. Now, fraudsters are targeting EPF account holders to cheat them and make quick money.
See Also: Have an issue with the EPF account? Here is how to get it resolved
In this blog, we are going to talk about an incident where fraudsters tried to cheat a 68-year-old, retired person by using the Employees' Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) name. Employees' Provident Fund Organization is an organization which manages the Employee Provident Fund.
Recently, a 68-year-old retired person named Rajendra received a call from someone who introduced himself as an employee of the Employees' Provident Fund Organization (EPFO). The caller asked Rajendra to provide his personal details like mobile number, email ID, Aadhaar number, Permanent account number (PAN), last employment details and universal account number (UAN). Believing that the caller was from the EPFO, Rajendra gave all his details.
After he provided all the above details, the caller informed Rajendra that he was eligible for a benefit of Rs 80,000 from the EPFO; as he had worked between 1990 and 2019. He even informed him that the EPFO management has decided to share the benefits of the unclaimed EPFO corpus with randomly picked EPFO members. In order to claim this benefit, Rajendra was asked to transfer Rs 20,000 as commission to a bank account. He was informed that once Rs 20,000 was transferred, Rs 80,000 would be credited to his account.
Believing something to be wrong, Rajendra checked the official website of the EPFO before taking any further steps. As soon as he visited the website, he read the pop-up message which stated, “EPFO never asks you to share your personal details such as Aadhaar / PAN / UAN over the phone. EPFO never calls any member/subscriber to deposit any amount in any bank account for processing an unclaimed amount. Please do not respond to such fake calls.”
After reading the message, Rajendra disconnected the call. After some time he tried calling again, but the number was not reachable.
There are many incidents where EFPO subscribers are targeted by fraudsters using similar tricks.
Apart from calling subscribers, fraudsters even share links of fake websites on social media which claim that selected employees who worked between 1990 and 2019 are eligible for benefits of Rs 80,000 from the EPFO. If you click on this link you will be taken to a phishing website.
See Also: How to Avoid EPFO Scam While Withdrawing EPF?
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