Indore (Madhya Pradesh): A retired pensioner and his wife fell victim to a cyber fraud, losing Rs 5,99,842 after a scammer posing as a bank representative hacked their devices under the guise of increasing their Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transaction limits within Annapurna police station limits.
According to complainant Surya Deepak Shrivastav, a resident of Sudama Nagar, he had submitted an online request on Aug 5 to raise his UPI limit. On Aug 18, he received a call displaying a Bank of India customer care logo.
The caller claimed to process his request and asked for his savings account details and email address. The fraudster then convinced Shrivastav to extend the same service to his wife, obtaining her account details as well.
Shortly after the call ended, the scammer compromised Shrivastav’s phone. The scammer fraudulently siphoned off Rs 1,74,842 from Shrivastav’s account in three transactions and Rs 4,25,000 from his wife’s account in two transactions.
The couple discovered the incident on Sep 1 while checking their pension balance via mobile banking. Upon realising they had been cheated, Shrivastav reported the matter to the police. Police registered a case and launched an investigation to trace the fraudulent transactions.
Malicious APKs cost two men Rs 1L each
In two separate cyber fraud incidents, fraudsters duped two persons of Rs 1 lakh each after tricking them into downloading malicious Android Application Package (APK) files onto their mobile phones in the Chandan Nagar police station area.
In the first case, victim Harvinder Singh Jhanj, a resident of Tapti Parisar, reported that he received an unknown APK file on his mobile number. As soon as he downloaded and installed the file, his phone got hacked and temporarily stopped responding.
Shortly after, on Sep 19, he received a notification that Rs 99,000 was debited from his bank account and fraudulently transferred to a UPI ID belonging to Mustafa Ali.
Similarly, Neeraj Chauhan, a resident of Vardhman Nagar, fell prey to a similar fraud. After downloading a suspicious APK file sent to his phone, his device froze. Soon after, Rs 1,00,000 was debited from his bank account without authorisation and transferred to an account linked to UPI user Irshad.
Upon realising they had been cheated, both victims lodged formal complaints on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP).
