Mumbai, May 21: A 40-year-old accountant lost ₹2 lakh in a cyber fraud after she contacted the customer care of an ecommerce giant to replace a night suit she had ordered due to size issues. The accountant lost ₹2 lakh in a series of transactions after she shared her bank details. Upon releasing the con, she immediately approached Kandivali Police and lodged a complaint, which booked the unidentified accused under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Information Technology (IT)Act for cheating.
According to the statement given by the victim, she had ordered a night suit from an ecommerce website on April 16, which was delivered at her Kandivali address the next day. The night suit, however, did not fit the complainant and she searched the ecommerce website's customer care number on a local search engine. When she contacted the customer care number, she told its representative that she wished to replace the item with a larger size, following which the representative gave her another number to contact.
Upon contacting the given number, the other representative assured her to get the item replaced within two days. Moreover, he also asked the accountant if she had a GooglePay or a PhonePay account, to which the complainant denied. As a last attempt, the man asked the complainant to share her bank details, to which the latter shared the last four digits of her bank account number and refused to share the PIN. The representative then asked the accountant to take up the matter with his superior, Rahul and shared his number.
Subsequently, the accountant spoke to Rahul and shared her ordeal. On Tuesday evening, the complainant received intimation of four transactions of ₹24,999, ₹25,000, ₹24,997 and ₹24,999 respectively. When the complainant contacted Rahul, he assured that the money will be refunded and no more money will be debited. The next day, on Wednesday, however, another ₹1 lakh was debited, after which the complainant approached the bank to enquire, only to realise she was duped.
The accountant then approached Kandivali Police and lodged a complaint against Rahul and the customer care representative, who duped her of ₹1,99,994 on the pretext of replacing the item ordered via an ecommerce website with size revision. Accordingly, Kandivali Police booked the accused under relevant sections of the IPC and IT Act, and have contacted the bank to retract the payment made or free the account until further probe.
