Believing in a fraudulent text message informing that his bank account has been blocked as he had not updated his KYC, left an 80-year old man poorer to the tune of Rs 29.81 lakh. The senior citizen contacted the 'customer care' number provided in the text message and was duped of his hard-earned money through phishing fraud. The case is being investigated by the Thane police.
According to the Chitalsar Manpada police in Thane, the complainant is a resident of Pokhran Road and had retired from service in 2000. As per the complainant he had Rs 41.26 lakh in his bank account. On October 9, the octogenarian received a text message informing him that he would not be able to use his bank account as the KYC was pending.
A customer care number was provided in the text message and on calling on the said number, the man was induced to share his bank account details by the fraudster. “For two days, people claiming to be calling from the bank, induced the victim to share the OTPs which he had received on his phone to update his KYC," said a police officer.
The police said, "When one of the callers told the victim not to visit the bank or ATM to withdraw money as the process to update KYC was still on, the victim sensed something amiss and on visiting the nearby ATM centre he found that fraudsters had siphoned Rs 29.81 lakh from his account."
The victim then approached the police and got a criminal offence registered in the matter. A case has been registered under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and section 66D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
