A 21-year-old student from Bhayandar, learnt it the hard way after he was duped of Rs 39,000 by the cyber crooks. In his complaint to the police, the student stated that, soon after placing an advertisement on the popular e-commerce portal to sell his used cycle for Rs 6,999, he received a call from a person posing as prospective “buyer” showing keen interest to purchase the cycle for his son.
The person introduced himself as an army officer and agreed to pay Rs. 7,000 for the cycle by making an online payment through his army card before taking the delivery.
The student fell for it and entered the UPI pin to pay the amount rather than receiving it. When asked for a refund, the fraudster claimed that this was a mistake and that now he was sending a link for twice the amount in order to account for the money that had been “mistakenly” debited from the seller's account.
The fraudster repeated the exercise thrice and the student ended up losing Rs 39,000. To establish his credentials, the crook not only shared copies of army identity card but also answered a video call in which he was sporting a uniform.
Based on the student’s complaint the Navghar police have registered an offence under sections 170, 171, 420 of the IPC and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act 2008 against the fraudsters. Further investigations were underway.
