A 58-year-old chief loco inspector from the railway department has fallen prey to a scammer and lost Rs4.82 lakh in an OTP fraud.
According to the police, the complainant is a resident of Kalyan. On November 9, after realising that his mobile banking app was not working, he contacted the customer care number, which he had come across on the internet. The scammer who posed as the customer support executive, on the pretext of helping the complainant, directed him to enter his customer ID in his mobile phone banking app.
The complainant followed the instructions and received an OTP through a text message on his mobile phone. As told by the customer care executive, the complainant entered the OTP received in the bank’s app on his mobile phone. Later when he visited a petrol pump for a refill he was shocked to know that he did not have any money left in his bank account, police said.
Baffled by this, the man checked his phone and came across three transaction alert text messages informing him that Rs4.82 lakh had been debited from his bank account through online transactions. The complainant then raised a complaint about the incident on the cyber crime helpline. He then visited the bank and got his bank account blocked. He provided details about the three fraudulent online transactions to the police.
A case has been registered by Thane police under sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
