Fraud job mail

Few months back my father received a fraud job mail. It was one of the most intelligent forgery issue we have encountered in our life. My father have retired from a reputed oil sector in senior position. He applied for jobs in job online job portals. After 2-3 months of application my father received a mail that you have a job offer from Connals Oil Ltd, UK. You will get a salary of 14000-18000 pounds(more than 1 crore INR). Free education for children and complete medical insurance. But they asked a fees of Rs 4700 for legal issues. Just go to this following link to visit the company website(now this website is blocked as lot of people have reported it as scam):

http://www.connalsoil.co.uk

We received this mail around 8-12 months back. The website was extremely nice like any good company and they also had a link which was showing its price in stock market. But when I clicked that link it was showing stock market price of  jkx oil and gas company. 

Secondly the company had no wikipedia link. All good listed companies have wikipedia link.

When I tried to find the company name in Google map, no such company existed in UK. 

Thus we concluded that it is a forged mail. 

It took nearly 2-3 days of work to make out that it is a forged mail.

Note: Companies never ask for money from the new joiners. If there is any monetary issue it is settled from the first month salary of the employee.

Real estate frauds and the preventive measures

Everybody needs a house. We invest a large chunk of our capital in getting a house. But what will happen if we are cheated. In this post I am going to discuss about these issues and the countermeasures.

In the last two decades the real estate business have grown exponentially. The builders started more construction than their capacity. If a company can build 100 flats it started to construct 1000 flats in the hope that as one by one their flats will be occupied they will use the capital to complete their project. But after 2014 real estate business rapidly faced steep slowdown due to steep fall in demands. This happened because the number of constructions are much higher than demand and secondly cost of flats have gone very high. As a result most of the construction work halted. Just move in NCR you can see vivid examples. These companies have became bankrupt as they have invested their entire capital in the business.

Now to sell off their incomplete flats they are giving lucrative offers like no maintenance charges for 1-2 years, free split AC in 1-3 rooms, book your flat in just Rs 25000.

Should we buy those flats?
No, there was a long discussion on this issue in news channels and they gave their feedback based on these points:
1. Since these companies are bankrupt they are not in  a position to  complete the flats in next 50 years.
2. Generally a flat is only given to customer when it is completely ready  like complete water supply, electricity, maintenance etc. But these companies are finding it difficult to even sell their flats so how they will complete their construction.eg JP group could not complete their construction because they could hardly sell around 25-33% of their flats(Times of India report). 
3. Indian Judicial system will take a long time to provide the customers their rights.

What is the solution?  
Only buy ready to occupy flats. You can also buy second hand flats. Due to more supply the house rent in our locality of 1500 sq ft houses have gone down from Rs 14500 per month to Rs 9000 per month. And the cost of flats have also gone down. So if you do a little bit of research you can get ready to occupy flats at reasonable price. Just contact a professional property dealer he can help you.

Roberry during ATM money withdrawl

This incidence took place few days back in our locality in Ghaziabad. A person went to ATM in the early morning to avoid day crowd. He withdrew Rs 20,000 cash and when he came out from the ATM, peeper spray was sprayed in his eyes and 2 persons snatched the cash from him.

In Delhi-NCR a large crowd stands in queue for ATM service. That's why many of us choose odd hours to withdraw our cash. But sometimes it can be risky.

So always encash your money from ATM during normal working hours.

Fraud phone call to create a kidnap scenario to extract money

Amit(name changed) received a phone call from his telecom service provider that his 4G facility is going to be updated so he should switch off his mobile phone for 1 hour. Amit works in IT sector. He kept the phone switched off for some time. But, he felt something is fishy he immediately switched on the mobile phone. Within few minutes he received a call from his father. His father was tensed. He informed that they received a call that Amit has been kidnapped and they also asked for ransom. His father was going to pay the money for Amit's safety. But as Amit picked the call on time they came out from the plot safely.

Telecom operators never ask to switch off mobile, our bank details, our personal details.

Frauds in stock brokerage firms and preventive measures

Money is the most important thing in this mortal world. All of us wants our money to in safe hands. That's why we keep our money in banks. And we also invest in share markets. For this we need an account (demat account) with brokerage firm.

Many scams have taken place in the recent past in which big brokerage firms were involved. In this post I will tell you how to check genuine brokerage firms.

1. Go to this link of SEBI to find out the registered stock brokers.
        http://www.sebi.gov.in/sebiweb/home/detail/4980/new/Registered-Stock-Brokers-in-equity-segment

2. This is important because there were 100's of brokers in India who have been blacklisted.Unicon securities, NS Broking, Kalyan securities and many more. Read the following circular from NSE to learn more
https://www1.nseindia.com/content/circulars/INVG31764.pdf.

If I will write all of them then this whole page will be filled up. Some of them cheated the clients, some of them have done tax frauds etc. And the most important thing general public could not get back their money from these brokerage firms. Means lakhs of people lost crores of money. And the most serious problem is that these companies were also SEBI registered because without registration a brokerage firm cannot work. Thus you are not safe even if you are opening an account with registed stock brokers as listed in point 1.

3. How these frauds are done: Whenever you open an account with brokerage firm a Unique client code(UCC) is linked to your PAN card. For more details go to this link:
https://www.nseindia.com/invest/content/inve_rights_ob.htm 

In the above link you will also find your rights as an investor.

This UCC number is just like your bank account number. Read these SEBI guidelines in the following link:
http://www.sebi.gov.in/circulars/2001/CIR392001.html 

UCC is 10 charecters length.

UNCON securities which is one of the blacklisted brokerage firms sold off all the shares of the shareholders in their accounts and took away all their money. It was a scam of 100 crore rupees. This was possible only because he got all the shares of the shareholders linked with his own UCC number. Means the cleints were not alotted their UCC number or they we assigned some false UCC number.

4. The major problem is that most of the brokerage firms gives you a false number when you ask them for UCC number from their helpdesk. And they also send forged mails from NSE as there is a directive from NSE that all the clients should receive mails about their daily transactions. But there is a good new you can verify your UCC number. 

5. Steps to verify your UCC number.
     Go to the following link:
       https://www.nseindia.com/tv 

The following page will be displayed:

 
In the bottom of the page sign up button is visible click that. Now you will be redirected to the following page:

 

 Just fill this form. Put the exact PAN no because your PAN no is linked to your UCC no. Now click submit.

Now the following page is displayed:

 

In client code enter your UCC and in Member name write the name of the broker you are registered to eg. ICICI securities ltd, HDFC securities ltd. Now click submit. If your UCC number is correct then it will be accepted otherwise a message will come that your PAN code, client code and member name combination is not valid. If this happens then you may be in trouble any time. If you have UCC number then NSE will pay you 15 lacks in case of any loss of trade related data. 

Many of the brokerage firms in India donot give proper UCC number to their customers. I have an account with the most popular discounted brokerage firm in India. They could not provide me my authentic  UCC number. So I decided to to close my account with them. When I asked them for UCC number they got panicked and the same day they send me a lot of mails pretending as mails from nse transactions. DP number is not UCC number. Your user-id or client -id provided by brokerage firm is not UCC number. I have an account with ICICI securities ltd. Their UCC number is authentic. All the prestigious banks like SBI, ICICI, HDFC will provide you with UCC number. If you donot believe me just check the links I have referred in this page. These links are the official links of NSE india and SEBI. People are running after cheap brokerage firms. But they donot understand the risks.

How these fraud brokerage firms create my tax statements? 
These brokerage firms belongs to influential people who have good links. So they manipulate the data according to their need. eg all of us need a demat account for share trading but the people who have lot of black money they donot have a demat account but still they trade in share market. In fact most of the money in share market is black money. 

The banks charge very high brokerage what to do? 
They have cheap brokerage plans which you can buy at a very reasonable price. But they will not be as cheap as some other brokerage service providers. But atleast your money is in safe hands. Go for those brokers whose banks are interlinked to the demat account. It is safe.