The Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) lodged a complaint with the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) to track down and take legal action against unknown suspects who cloned the authority?s official website and sent fraudulent alerts to citizens, asking them to pay fines for pending e-challans.

Separately, it wrote to the Punjab Police to trace the mobile phone numbers of the suspects, who had created a fake website and disseminated a fraudulent link.

The PSCA took action when the link, containing fraudulent pending e-challans, was sent to citizens. The link urged recipients to visit the fake website and follow the steps to pay fines.

The authority declared that the website and link were not legitimate and confirmed that it was a clear phishing scheme.

PSCA Managing Director Ahsan Younas told Dawn that scammers use the internet for online fraud and apply various tactics to deceive citizens for financial gain.

A team of experts conducted the inquiry and found that a man in Karachi had generated ?the alert message with a voice note,? Younas said.

The PSCA then launched an ?awareness campaign on a large scale? on social media and alerted citizens that the authority ?sends e-challan alerts from the official number 8070? only, Younas added.

It also asked citizens to be careful and verify links via the official authority?s number to avoid online fraud.

A close look at the contents of the message revealed the use of the word ?urgent,? which the official PSCA website or messages did not use, he said, adding that the domain name of the fake website was different from the original one, gop.pk.

PSCA Chief Operating Officer Mustansar Feroz said an investigation into the mobile number of the scammer revealed that it was registered under the name of a woman who had nothing to do with the scam.

He added that the suspects acquired mobile phone numbers, SIMs and CNICs of citizens from vendors, saying that this was an alarming situation.

The request submitted to the NCCIA to launch the probe also included action against the scammers for damaging the reputation of the authority, Feroz said.