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Swindler who stole waiter’s ₹9.5 lakh by posing as banker nabbed by Panchkula police
The victim had looked up a bank’s helpline number for help with clearing a cheque and the fraudster had called him back
The cyber team of Haryana Police have arrested a West Bengal native who stole a Panchkula-based waiter’s ₹9.5 lakh by posing as a banker.
The accused, identified as Mohd Sarfraz, 24, was arrested from Howrah, West Bengal. Police recovered 11 ATM cards, two mobile phones and two SIM cards of various banks, all of which were purchased on fake IDs.
Police on October 30 had received a complaint on cyber helpline 1930 from the victim, Brajmohan, a resident of Sector 19, who works as a waiter at a private hotel in Zirakpur.
Brajmohan stated that his relative had sent him money through cheque but he got late in getting it cleared. So, he searched for the bank’s helpline number online on October 30. He couldn’t connect to the number, but he received call back soon after, with the caller identifying himself as an employee of the bank.
The caller took his bank account details on the pretext of helping him get the cheque cleared. Later, ₹9.5 lakh were fraudulently withdrawn from his bank account, said Brajmohan.
As he had called the National Cyber Helpline 1930 the same day, police managed to retrieve ₹7.24 lakh of the stolen amount.
Addressing a press conference on Monday regarding the arrest, superintendent of police (Cyber) Amit Dahiya said for the first time, as a pilot project, bank’s nodal officers had been included in the cyber helpline team.
“Mostly after a fraud, it took time to get information from the bank, due to which golden time was lost and the stolen money was transferred to scammers’ accounts. But with the help of this project, all information becomes available to police immediately,” added Dhaiya.
The accused was produced before a court and sent to four-day police remand.
PhD scholar loses ₹98,500 to dating app scam
Chandigarh A 35-year-old city resident fell prey to online scammers who targeted her through a dating app.
Pursuing PhD from CSIR-IMTECH, Sector 39, the woman said she started talking to a man named Dr Aayaan Kumar George through Bumble, a dating and networking app, around two months back.
She said they continued to communicate through WhatsApp. On September 29, George told her that he had reached the Delhi airport with his mother. After sometime, a woman called her, claiming to be from the customs department at the airport.
The caller informed her that her friend had been detained as he was carrying 100,000 British pounds, higher than the permissible limit, and that she will have to pay ₹68,500 to get him released. To help her friend, she made the payment online through two transactions, but later he ceased contact with her.
Realising she had been duped, she filed a police complaint, and a case under Sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code was registered at the Cyber Crime police station in Chandigarh.
