A 38-year-old woman from Borivali was duped to the tune of Rs 3 lakh in an online cheating scam. The fraudster cheated her on the pretext of helping her lodged a complaint with the customer care after she faced difficulties using her investment app.
According to the police, the woman had installed an online investment app to invest in mutual funds on July 23. She faced problems during e-verification of signatures. She was trying to link her and her father's bank account to the app. After repeated failed attempts she finally complained to their official ID given in the app itself and received acknowledgement as well.
On the same day, she received a call purportedly from the customer care department of the app. After listening to her problem, the customer care representative assured to solve her problem. The caller told her that his senior will call her in the next 15 minutes.
Within minutes she received another call from a person who introduced himself as a senior officer from the app. He then asked her to install a remote desktop application and asked for its connect number.
He sent her a link on her phone. The woman filled details of her and father's banking account on the link. As soon as she submitted, Rs 2.3 lakh was debited from her father's account in six transactions, while Rs 70,000 was debited from her account. Realising the fraud, the victim blocked her cards and approached the Borivali police station.
The police registered an offence under the IPC sections of cheating by presentation (419), cheating (420) common intention (34) and under the section 66 (D) of information Technology act was registered as an unknown accused. Looking at the events, the possibility of someone from the customer care department sharing her number to the fraudster could not be ruled out, said an official.
