Fraudster poses as friend from Australia on WhatsApp to dupe man of ₹7 lakh

Gurugram: Police on Wednesday booked an unidentified cyber fraudster for allegedly duping a senior citizen of ₹7 lakh, posing as his old friend who is based in Australia, on WhatsApp, said officials on Thursday

Gurugram: Police on Wednesday booked an unidentified cyber fraudster for allegedly duping a senior citizen of ₹7 lakh, posing as his old friend who is based in Australia, on WhatsApp, said officials on Thursday.

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The victim — Vinod Kumar Mittal (66), an architect — received a call from the suspect on Monday (May 30), who requested him to transfer the money on an urgent basis, alleged the victim’s son, Vakul Mittal.

“My father was not familiar with the cellphone number, but as the suspect posed as his friend and had put a photograph of that person as his display picture (DP), my father did not suspect him. The two rarely interacted on WhatsApp... The suspect talked to my father just like his friend. He requested my father to transfer ₹7 lakh to his relative’s bank account in India, as that person was in dire need of help. To gain my father’s confidence, the suspect even transferred some Canadian dollars to my father’s bank account, mentioning that he could not send money to his relative due to technical glitch,” alleged Vakul.

Vakil said that the fraudster also requested his father to send him a cancelled cheque, and then shared a transfer slip of ₹26 lakh. “My father then transferred ₹7 lakh via RTGS (real-time gross settlement, which is a funds transfer system) to the bank account provided by the suspect... Later, when my father was arranging money to transfer more money to the suspect, he shared the information with me and I realised that it was a fraud case,” Vakul said.

Bijender Singh, station house officer (SHO) of Cyber Crime police station, said that the suspect again called the victim on Monday morning and requested him to transfer ₹5 lakh more. “The victim asked the fraudster to make a video call, during which, the latter — in a mask — claimed that he was the son of the victim’s friend and had to receive the phone call as his father had stepped out for some work. The victim asked him to remove the mask, and took a screengrab for record,” Singh said, adding that a case was registered against the suspect on Wednesday under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (fraud) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 66D of Information Technology (IT) Act.

“After collecting information from the bank, we got to know that the money was withdrawn in six transactions from different locations in Bihar. We are awaiting more details about the account holder,” Singh said.