Navi Mumbai: Woman loses ₹ 20,000 to cyber fraud

A 43-year-old woman from Palava lost Rs 20,000 to cyber fraudsters while trying to get a refund of Rs 840 in her bank account from an e-commerce site after returning a product bought online.

The e-commerce site has already credited the amount to her wallet in the app account. However, she wanted to get this amount to be credited to her bank account instead of her wallet.

The complainant, a resident of Palava who has a business office in Vashi had ordered a clothing product from an e-commerce site and received the product in cash on delivery in July 2022. However, she returned the product after she found it was not of good quality. The e-commerce site credited Rs 840 to the wallet in the app.

After waiting for a few days, she did not receive any response from the e-commerce site. So, she sent an email to the consumer court regarding the issue against the e-commerce site on September 2, 2022.

Scammer called victim posing as e-commerce executive

On September 3, she received a call from Rahul Khanna, who claimed that he was a customer care executive of the e-commerce site.

The person assured her that the refund would be credited to her bank account and shared a link to click. However, the complainant refused to click the link.

Following that, the scammer asked whether she held an account with either ICICI bank or SBI to which the victim said that she holds an account in ICICI bank.

She opened the bank app and typed '20000rscrefund' on the cardless withdrawal option. However, without receiving any OTP, Rs 20,000 was withdrawn from her account and was transferred to the accused.

Police book case for cheating

According to police, the complainant woman immediately called that number to know the reason. The person told her that there might be some issue in the system and disconnected the call. Later she tried to reach him over the phone, but the number was switched off.

Finally, she approached the Vashi police and registered a complaint. Vashi police registered a case against an unidentified person under section 420 of IPC for cheating and section 66 D of the IT Act and started an investigation.