Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Six people were duped by con men who sent messages urging them to pay their due electricity bills within a week.
Nonetheless, the Fraud Investigation Cell of the City Crime Branch managed to return the entire amount to the fraud victims, an official said on Saturday.
When the victims made phone calls on a number given by the conmen, they were told to download a software with which the accused gained access to the victims’ bank accounts and managed to transfer the amount from them.
According to a Crime Branch officer, in the first case, they gathered information from complainant Anant and found that he had received a message that his electricity bill was overdue. In the message, it was mentioned that the complainant’s electricity connection will be disconnected if he fails to pay the bill. After reading the message, Anant made a phone call to the number provided by the message sender. The receiver, who posed himself as an officer from the electricity distribution company, told him to download Any Desk Application in the complainant’s mobile phone. When the complainant downloaded the remote access app in his mobile phone, the accused got access to his mobile phone. He told him to make a payment of Rs 50 to avoid the penalty. The complainant made payment after which the accused managed to steal Rs 1 lakh in two installments from his bank account.
In a similar case, complainant Pawan had received the same message and he talked to the con men, who told him to make a payment of Rs 10 and thus he managed to steal Rs 1.8 lakh from his bank account using the remote access application.
In the third such incident, complainant Anamika was duped of Rs 6,541 by the cyber criminal. In the fourth incident, one Piyush was duped of Rs 60,000 by the accused. In two other incidents, Arvind was duped of Rs 85,000 and Shriji was duped of Rs 36,000 by the conmen.
In all the incidents, the modus operandi was the same. The Fraud Investigation Cell contacted the bank officials and investigated the case. Thus, they managed to return the entire amount (Rs 3.82 lakh) to the fraud victim in their bank accounts within hours. The complainants thanked the officers for their excellent investigation due to which they received their amount back to their bank accounts.
The crime branch officials urged people not to respond to any messages which were received with the name of the electricity company to pay the bills online. Make bill payments at only the official sites of the company to avoid such frauds.
