Con promised mobile numbers, siphons off lakhs of rupees

We all wish for the easiest set of numerical as our mobile phone number, but some are crazier still, who want the fanciest of them, like Bond’s “007” to end with. This craze for fancy mobile phone numbers has proved costly for some Hyderabadis, who fell prey to a new fad of securing eye-catching mobile numbers like '9000000000' and '9111111111' and ended up paying their hard-earned money to a con artist. By the time the fraud was realized, the culprit had made away with lakhs of rupees.

Such numbers are usually reserved for VVIPS, but a lot of people who are either staunch believers of numerology or mad about fancy mobile numbers, are becoming soft targets for con men who contact them with offers of rare mobile numbers. The fraud was caught after several victims lodged complaints that they paid thousands of rupees hoping to get these fancy numbers, but never got the number.

A businessman and one of the victims contacted the Cyberabad police and said that a few days ago an SMS landed on his phone offering fancy numbers at discounted prices. The message claimed that they can get the mobile numbers, which are generally sold by telecom companies for over Rs 1 lakh due to the demand, for as low as Rs 25,000 or Rs 75,000, depending on the number.

People who responded to the message were assured by the fraudster and who made them believe that generally high-end fancy numbers were dealt at the headquarters of the telecom company, but some leftover numbers were being sold at discounted prices. After receiving the money, the culprit's mobile phone was switched off. Till date, 14 victims have lodged complaints. Incidentally, an MLA from Andhra Pradesh too became a victim while chasing a fancy number and lost money a year ago.

Subsequently, desktop advertising is set to decline for the rest of Zenith’s forecast period, by 0.9 percent in 2016, 0.4 percent in 2017 and 6 percent in 2018. The ad spends on the mobile platform has crossed desktop advertising by a year earlier than Zenith had predicted previously.

Zenith Optimedia, owned by France’s Public, has cut back its expectation for growth in global advertising this year for the second time to 4.1 percent from a previous forecast of 4.6 percent in March. In its report on Monday, Zenith cited the devaluation of the Argentine peso for the forecast revision.

It also said the top six global advertising markets would remain stable between 2015 and 2018, during which time it expected China to be the biggest contributor to new advertising spending, ahead of the United States.