A 38-year-old small scale industrial unit owner from Bhayandar became the latest target of a phishing racket after online fraudsters hacked into his e-wallet and siphoned off more than Rs. 3.54 lakh from both his bank accounts which were linked to the application.
Notably the complainant-Pawan Kumar Thakur who runs a steel utensils buffing unit in the industrial area of Bhayandar had arranged the money to make online transfers and facilitate return journey’s for his employees who had gone back to their native places in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh owing to the lockdown that was imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus in March, this year.
In his complaint to the police, Thakur stated that he encountered technical glitches while transferring money to his workers through his e-wallet. To resolve the issue, Thakur established contact with the so-called customer care center of the e-wallet company which he sourced out from an online search engine, which was apparently fake. Thakur was asked to download a mobile application on his mobile phone.
After following the directions and revealing the codes, the complainant was shocked as more than Rs. 1.74 lakh was immediately siphoned via multiple transactions from his bank account. However, the fraudster did not stop there and went on to withdraw Rs 1.80 lakh from another bank account which was also linked to the e-wallet. The complainant lost a total of Rs. 3, 54,767.
A case under section 420 of the IPC and relevant sections of the Information Technology (amended) Act, 2008 has been registered at the Navghar police station against unidentified fraudsters. Further investigations were underway.
