A 20-year-old girl from Wadala who was desperate for job amid the lockdown, ended up losing Rs 8.67 lakh when cyber crook duped her on the pretext of offering a job. The fraudster initially made her to pay Rs 4 lakh on various reasons while the remaining amount was swindled from her on the pretext of offering a refund.
According to the police, the girl a Bachelor of Banking Insurance was looking for a job since the last few months. However, she was unable to get one due to lockdown. She had also uploaded her resume on a job portal. In the third week of July, she received a call from one Niharika who introduced herself as a HR representative of an airline company and told the girl that her resume has been selected for the post of an accountant. She then asked her to pay Rs 2,500 as registration charges. The girl made the payment the same day.
On the next day, Niharika again called her and asked her to pay Rs 6,200 for Identity card and then on the next day one person named Vikram called her from the same company and asked the girl to pay another Rs 28,000 on the pretext of opening a salary account, unaware of the fraud, the girl paid all the money.
However, this was just the beginning, the next day the girl received a HR bond approval letter on her mail that asked her to pay Rs 48,750 for the procedure. She paid that amount as well. Similarly, the fraudsters continued to ask money under different pretexts and the girl continued to pay.
After paying over Rs 4 lakh, when she did not received any job she started asking for a refund. This time the fraudster changed their modus operandi and told her to pay Rs 1.13 lakh in order to receive the refund and assured her that she will receive the entire amount at once. Trusting them the girl again paid Rs 1.13 lakh however, her ordeal was far from over.
The fraudsters then made her to pay another Rs 3 lakh in multiple transactions on the pretext of refunds, but did not return a single rupee. After paying Rs 8.67 lakh, when the fraudsters continued to ask for more money, the girl realised something was a miss and narrated the incident to her family, her family asked her to stop making any further payments and approached the cops.
On her complaint, the Wadala police has registered an offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections of cheating by personation (419), cheating (420) and whoever fraudulently or dishonestly uses as genuine any document or electronic record (471) along with section 66C (identity theft) and 66 D (cheating by personation using computer resources ) of the Information Technology act.
We are trying to trace the mobile numbers which were used to contact the girl and also wrote to the bank seeking account details in which the amount had been transferred, said a police officer.
