Nearly 400k SIMs axed for fraud

Mumbai: The telecom department’s latest initiative to categorise high-risk fraud accounts has caught and blacklisted 300,000-400,000 telecom SIMs used in fraudulent schemes, show government data.

The Financial Risk Indicator (FRI), launched in May, is now daily flagging 2,000 high-risk phone numbers that may be involved in investment or job scams, and other fraudulent activities. More SIMs on the network are then identified using artificial intelligence-based pattern matching. This has helped UPI platforms like Paytm, GPay and PhonePe prevent suspicious transactions worth crores of rupees in the past month, a senior official at the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) told ET.