Mumbai: The wife of a south Mumbai-based travel agent lost ₹7.44 lakh to a KYC fraud after she was tricked into sharing her bank details. The woman was sure that the caller was from the private bank after the contact details stated by him for verification were authentic. A case of cheating has been lodged at Malabar Hill police station and the investigation is underway.
On September 24, wife of a SoBo travel agent, who is an account holder at a private bank, received a call from a 'representative' of the bank. The caller identified himself as Rakesh Mishra, a bank agent. During the phone conversation, Mishra correctly mentioned the woman's information like her full name, mother's name, account number and phone number, after which she was convinced that the caller was authentic.
The woman, who is pregnant and could not visit police station amid the Novel Coronavirus outbreak, lodged the complaint through her husband. "Mishra told my wife that her bank account's KYC procedure is not updated and to do so, he sent her a link. The agent instructed my wife to open the link and input an OTP to initiate the process and then fill in the form, which sought her net banking and debit card details. After filling up the form, ₹7,44,750 was debited from my wife's account in a series of transactions-- ₹80,900, ₹25,000, ₹5,000 and two transactions of ₹3,04,425 each," the woman's husband said in the complaint.
After the money was debited, the woman iterated the incident to her husband, who realised that she was duped. The travel company owner then approached Malabar Hill Police and lodged a complaint, after which a First Information Report (FIR) was filed against Mishra who impersonated a bank official and duped the woman of ₹7.44 lakh.
