A 42-year-old housewife from South Mumbai lost ₹ 9 lakh while looking for a customer service number from her bank. The fraudster tricked the woman into downloading a third-party app and asked her to transfer the money. Following the complaint, Malabar Hill Police recorded an offense and began their investigation.
The incident took place last week when the woman, a resident of the Malabar Hill area, searched online for her bank’s customer service number for details of her transactions.
Police say the woman dialed a cell phone number she found online as a customer service number. However, the caller disconnected the number saying he would call her someday. She immediately received a call from another number, police said.
The woman asked the operator for details of her transaction. It was then that the person on the phone asked him to download a screen sharing app, the woman who was not aware of the app did as she was asked and downloaded the app. .
She also shared the app’s unique identifier with the scammer who shared his mobile screen with him, police said.
The scammer then asked her to enter her account number and within minutes she received a ₹ 9 lakh transaction alert from her account.
She realized something was wrong and rushed to her bank after disconnecting the phone. Bank officials froze his account and advised him to contact the police.
“We have registered an offense under various sections for cheating by impersonation (419), cheating (420) and common intent (34) of the Indian Penal Code, as well as sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheat by impersonation using computer resources) of the Information Technology Act and the investigation is ongoing, said a police official.
(To receive our E-paper on WhatsApp daily, please Click here. We allow sharing of the article’s PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)
Posted on: Friday November 26th, 2021 10:38 PM IST
