Badnagar (Madhya Pradesh): SMS phishing scams have become common. In one such incident, a newspaper distributor was duped of Rs 4,000 by a man posing as an army officer in Badnawar tehsil of Dhar district.
Complainant Jai Singh told cops that he received a call from an unidentified number. The caller introduced himself as army officer Mukesh Kumar currently posted in Indore.
During the conversation, he told Singh that his senior wanted to insert 10,000 pamphlets regarding army recruitments in the daily newspapers and inquired about the cost.
On this, Jai Singh told Kumar that it would cost around Rs 3,500. Following this, Mukesh Kumar told him that his senior Sanjay Kumar would contact him. After some time, Sanjay Kumar, who introduced himself as an army officer deposited Re 1 into Jai Singh’s bank account to confirm details. Within a few minutes, Sanjay Kumar messaged Jai Singh that he had credited remaining amount into his account.
Meanwhile, before Jai Singh could see the complete message and verify, Sanjay Kumar called him again and told him that he had wrongly deposited Rs 7,500 in his account instead of Rs 3,500. He asked Singh to return the additional Rs 4,000 immediately otherwise he would be punished by his superiors.
Singh told him that his mobile had only incoming facility and he would get the refund done by an acquaintance. However, the person on the other side of the call kept on requesting him that he would be punished by his seniors if the money was not refunded immediately. He also said that his child was admitted to hospital and he urgently required the money.
Under the pressure of sustained pestering, Singh deposited Rs 4,000 from his neighbour's mobile to Kumar’s account. After some time, Singh received another call from the same mobile number. This time, the caller said that while saving Singh’s mobile number, he had wrongly deposited Rs 12,500 in his account and asked him to refund it.
Singh also received a message on his mobile as well. However, this time Singh didn’t give in to the pestering. Instead, he went straight to kiosk centre to reconfirm whether he got the money or not. He showed the message to Shubham Sharma there, who said that this message was bogus and no money was credited into his account.
When Singh tried to call back on the mobile number used by army officer Sanjay Kumar, it was found switched off. Till the filing of the report, Singh was yet to file a complaint.
