Millions of Indians have received alarming SMS alerts claiming an unpaid traffic challan, often carrying a suspicious link and demanding immediate payment. The messages looked official, while the sender was a regular 10-digit Indian mobile number. What most recipients did not know was that these messages were sent from the phones of ordinary Indian citizens whose devices had been silently turned into tools of cybercrime. This fraud was exposed and disrupted after a coordinated crackdown by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

 The Government has also blocked the Wingo App for allegedly sending fraudulent SMSes from users’ phones using them as mules to allegedly carry out large-scale message-based cybercrimes.

The action was taken by the Union Home Ministry after getting numerous complaints against the Android application.

According to I4C, Wingo was a “Telecom Mule as a Service” app and provided earnings based on SMS tasks.

Once a user downloaded the application, it activated a telecom mule infrastructure which used to start sending messages through the user’s phone for carrying out cyber crimes.

The messages used to reach 1.53 crore people every day, the agency said.

Over 1.53 lakh users, lured by daily small payments from the application, unknowingly allowed themselves to be part of these cyber crimes.

The app listed itself on the Android Play Store as a “multiplayer entertainment game that allows multiple participants to play in a live draw simultaneously.”