Fraudster posing as Mumbai crime branch officer dupes Chandigarh woman of ₹ 80 lakh

Under immense pressure and fear of arrest, the woman said she dismantled her fixed deposits (FD) and transferred ₹ 80,31,764 through Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) to the bank account provided by the caller

In a shocking case of cyber fraud, a woman from Sector 11 was scammed out of over ₹80 lakh by a cyber criminal posing as a crime branch officer from Mumbai.

The caller instructed the victim to seclude herself in a room and avoid discussing the matter with anyone. (iStock)

The woman narrated to the police that on July 1, she received a call from an unknown number. The caller introduced himself as an official from the crime branch in Mumbai, claiming that a mobile number issued against her Aadhaar card was implicated in 24 money laundering cases.

He elaborated that these cases were being heard in the Supreme Court to stress on the urgency and gravity of the situation. The caller instructed her to seclude herself in a room and avoid discussing the matter with anyone.

He then asked her to download Skype, through which he shared what he claimed were Supreme Court orders to convince her of the serious legal trouble she was in. The caller assured her that to avoid immediate arrest, she needed to deposit ₹80 lakh into a “secret surveillance account”, which would be refunded if she was found innocent after a detailed inquiry.

A few days later, she received a text message from the accused, asking about her whereabouts and her interactions. This unusual follow-up prompted her to suspect something was amiss. Realising that she might have been defrauded, she reported the matter to the Cyber Crime police station in Chandigarh.

On her complaint, a case under Sections 319 (2), 318 (4), 338, 336 (3), 340 (2), 61(2), 111 (1) and 111 (3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita has been registered. Investigation into the scam is currently underway, with the police working to trace the perpetrators and recover the stolen funds.