Bhayandar: A 25-year-old woman working as a teacher at a private college in Mira Road area became the latest victim of online crooks when she was duped of Rs99,994 while trying to book a ride to Karjat with a taxi aggregator via a popular mobile application.
According to the police, the woman encountered a technical snag while trying to book a ride to Karjat using the app of the private cab aggregator installed in her mobile phone.
To get this resolved, she had looked up the google search engine for the customer care number of the cab aggregator on the internet and called it up.
However, the number she stumbled upon was, in fact, the coordinates of the fraudster who had apparently managed to update their number as the digital wallet’s customer care number.
After promising to book a cab for the required destination, the caller sent a link requesting the victim to click on it, following which the victim also shared the Personal Identification Number (PIN) of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), linked to her account. But, the moment she did so, Rs4,999 got siphoned off from her account.
When questioned, the caller who termed it as a common issue being faced by many users and would be resolved soon, went on to dole out the drivers phone number who would come to pick her family up from their building on the designated date.
But neither did the cab arrive nor was the driver’s phone reachable. To her shock and dismay, her account was debited of more than Rs95, 000 via multiple online transactions. A case under Section 420 of the IPC was registered against the unidentified seamstress at the Naya Nagar police station.
By Suresh Golani
