Mumbai: A 38-year-old woman lost ₹1.4 lakh while trying to return a wrong product delivered by a shopping portal, said the Tilak Nagar police. The Vidyavihar resident had placed an order for sarees by making a prepaid payment of ₹2,500. On September 16, she received the parcel, but it contained wrong items.
When the woman asked the delivery executive to take it back, he suggested her to raise a complaint on the portal. She then ran a Google search for the customer care number and dialled a contact. The call was answered by a man, who posed as the company executive, and asked the woman to click on a link that he had sent on her WhatsApp.
Woman was lured into the cyber trap
Upon doing so, a file with .apk extension got installed on her mobile phone. The caller then told the complainant to fill her debit card details and also make a payment of ₹2 in order to confirm return pickup. Two days later on September 19, the woman received a message from her bank, saying that ₹99,999 has been debited from her account via Amazon UPI. The aggrieved immediately registered her complaint with the Central Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, however, ₹4,700 was again drawn out via Amazon UPI on September 21.
Bank prompts woman to register complaint with police
She then approached the bank which suggested her to register a police complaint. A case has been filed under the Information Technology Act. Prima facie, it appears that when the woman clicked on the link, an unknown app might have got installed on her device, which acted as a mirror screen for cons. Technical probe is underway to ascertain the theory. The use of Amazon Pay or UPI to siphon money points towards a new trend in cyber crime, said the police.
FPJ Cyber Secure | FPJ
