Mumbai: Man wanting to book hotel room loses Rs 7.5 lakh to cyber-fraud

Mumbai: A 62-year-old man who imparts training to engineers working with an airline company had recently lost Rs 7.50 lakh to cyber-frauds. The victim while surfing the internet had come across a hotel booking website and came across a customer care number.

The 'customer care executive,' on the pretext of getting the booking process done, induced the victim to download a remote access app on his phone and siphoned the money from his bank account in five transactions.

According to the Vakola police, the complainant is a resident of Navi Mumbai and works at Kalina.

On Friday, when the victim was at work, he surfed on the internet about hotel booking since he was supposed to stay in Delhi next month. The victim came across a website related to hotel booking and contacted a customer care number provided on the site. The victim informed the executive that he was unable to make the payment for booking after which the executive shared a link with the victim on phone.

The link then directed the victim to a remote access app and received an OTP to activate the app as well. The victim then realised that Rs 7.50 lakh got debited from his bank account in five transactions. The victim then raised a complaint with his bank and then approached the police.

The police have registered a case under sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.

The police are now getting details as to where the money was transferred to by the fraudster and are also probing the fraudulent customer care number which was used by the fraudster to trap the victim, sources said.

Published on: Saturday, October 29, 2022, 07:09 PM IST