Laila Rustom Jehangir, 62, one of the two daughters of billionaire Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry became the latest victim of cyber fraud when a cyber crook stole Rs. 90,000 using her ATM card. Interestingly, Jehangir a resident of Dubai never sought any card on the account. The Colaba police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) into the incident and began their investigation.
According to the police, the fraud came to light when the deputy general manager (accounts) Jayesh Merchant, 60, received a series of SMS alerts from the bank about the transaction from her account with the help of her ATM card. As the account was old no ATM card was ever sought or issued for the account and transactions were done only through cheques, said Merchant in his statement.
Since Laila resides in Dubai, she had authorised her father to manage the said account. In 2018, the company director Firoz Bhatena had been given the authority to look after the financial activities of the account, said police. Later, Bhatena passed on the responsibility to Merchant.
According to the police, Indian mobile phone do not work in Dubai, and that is the reason why Merchant's mobile number was given to the bank for SMS alerts.
After the transactions, Merchant first blocked the card and sought details of the transactions from the bank. The bank statement revealed that the card was used at Lucky restaurant in Bandra on June 27 and again at New Airfe Lamoulde on June 30. While Rs. 80,000 were withdrawn from the account between June 30 and July 1.
When he informed the bank officials that no card was ever sought from them, the bank official told him that a debit card on the said account was issued in 2018 which was in the name of Bhatena and the card was delivered to company's Colaba office. Even Bhatena told him that he was not aware of any debit card after which Merchant approached the police.
After the complaint was received the Colaba police registered a case against an unknown accused under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) section of cheating (420) and section 66C (Identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resources) of the Information Technology act.
We are checking the CCTV footages of the two locations along with the footage of the ATM centres to get possible leads of the accused, said a police officer.
