A 32-year-old woman working in a leading IT company recently lost ₹34 lakh after falling prey to fake courier fraud.
According to the police, on November 16, the complainant received a call from an unknown person claiming to be an employee of a courier company and informing them that there was an international parcel in her name containing clothes, five passports and other materials.
He further told her that the parcel was registered on her Aadhaar card number and mobile number. The woman told the caller that no such parcel belonged to her, to which the caller said that someone seemed to be misusing her Aadhar card details. The caller then told the victim that he would transfer the call to the Cybercrime Office in Mumbai so that she could complain about it to them. She was later told to contact them via Skype and she shared the details of her salary account.
The caller then told the woman that her bank account transactions to date need to be checked and verified and in the meantime, if she gets any OTPs, she needs to ignore them. The caller also threatened to arrest the victim if she did not follow the process. The complainant meanwhile also received a call from her bank, but she was unable to attend the call.
Later when the victim checked her phone, she was shocked to know that ₹10.51 lakh in savings in her bank account had been debited and an instant personal loan of ₹24 lakh was credited to her account of which ₹23.49 lakh was debited. Having realised that she had been duped, the complainant approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter.
The police on Monday registered a case under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and 66C (identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
