A Ghatkopar-based man lost ₹66,455 after a cyber fraudster tricked him into sharing his bank account on the pretext of updating his KYC details on GooglePay after PayTM was recently removed from the Google's Playstore. The accused wired the amount to another account in a series of transactions, after which the complainant realised he was duped and approached police to lodge a complaint.
The 39-year-old complainant, a supervisor at a trading agency, had transferred ₹1,500 to a friend on September 9 through GPay, but his friend had not received the amount. When he opened the mobile banking application, it prompted that the transaction had failed. The complainant then searched for GooglePay's customer care number on an online search engine, and contacted it. A man, who identified himself as a customer care agent, said that the money will either be credited in the receiver's account or be refunded.
A day passed and the transaction was still incomplete. The customer care agent called the complainant and asked him if the transaction was done, however, when the latter denied, the man told him to update the KYC procedure of GPay to authenticate the transaction.
"The man sent me a link and asked me to share the One Time Password (OTP), after which he has asked me to login to the PayTM application and enter my banking details like account number, card number and other privy information. I did so and soon a number of transactions worth ₹66,455 were made from my savings account," the supervisor said in his complaint.
Having realised that he was duped, the supervisor immediately approached Ghatkopar Police and lodged a complaint against the unidentified accused. Accordingly, the fraudster was booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act. Police are tracing the call and the Internet Protocol address to nab the accused, but no arrests were made yet.
