Even as the Coronavirus pandemic is at large, affecting the lives of many, and Tamil Nadu in a critical position with more than 40000 cases and numerous deaths as well, several educated youngsters have found a new way to loot money from general public.

While lockdown has restricted the movement of public, e-passes are issued by government in cases of urgency to allow public to move to another place, and this fraud team has made use of the situation to create fake e-passes. E-passes are currently issued in very high priority cases with the most important reason being health issues, the next most important reasons being death and marriages in the presence of limited number of people.

When applying for e-passes, people are required to provide details, and a barcode will be generated. As e-pass issuance and approval is getting delayed, people approach brokers who are cheating people in such a way that, the scanned barcode leads to a fake URL/ domain, where people are required to pay money, and a fake e-pass gets issued. However, recently many people were caught by police, carrying these fake passes, and were stopped from traveling, despite urgent needs. It's high time people stay alert and not believe the third party brokers or click malicious links/ URLs and pay money without checking the validity of the URL, as it not just is a waste of money, but also will not enable your travel in times of crisis.