TN education dept warns parents to avoid fraudsters call promising to get scholarships

CHENNAI: With the increase in the number of fraudsters, who cheat the parents by promising to get scholarships for the school children studying in Classes 10 and 12, Tamil Nadu government said several hundred parents of the wards have lost money from their personal bank accounts.

The sad aspect is that only about ten complaints were registered with the Cyber Crime police during the last eight months from February 27 to August 8 this year.

A senior official from the School Education Department, told DT Next that this August (the month would help the students to register for various welfare schemes) itself four cases were reported in which a single person had lost Rs 24,999 from their savings account.

In February, a complaint was registered where the complainant lost Rs 4,999.

Followed by four complaints in March, total value amounting to Rs 55,282 and one complaint in April for the amount of Rs 6,010.

Pointing out that the fraudsters also send fake messages especially to the students of the parents, who pursue vocational courses in the schools, the official said that the state government would provide Rs 1,000 per month for the internship programme.

"Desperate parents fall into the net of these offenders, who seek OTP and other details from them", he said once the parents share the OTP and other details, immediately the amount in the savings account will be vanished.

The official said therefore, it was decided to create awareness among the parents through the schools to ignore fraudsters' calls as the state government officials will not contact anyone personally to avail the student's welfare schemes.

"The offenders not only seek to share the OTP but also they would send QR code for scanning to avail the scholarship or any other welfare scheme for the students", he said adding that the parents will also be asked to lodge an official complaint when they receive such calls.

Furthermore, the director of the department through a circular had urged teachers'/school principals to not hold any conversations regarding scholarships with parents through phone.

Meanwhile, teachers' have also pointed out that both education and Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare departments have been involved in verifying the mobile number of parents for mass information dissemination.

"We were asked to confirm the mobile number of parents by calling them up on their mobile number and asking for OTP. Such an initiative can be misused by fraudsters too, "a teacher of a government school said.