E-Paper
SGPGI doc’s mother latest victim of cyber crime
A 69-year-old Lucknow woman was duped of ₹18 lakh by cyber criminals posing as police, who intimidated her for a week before she reported it.
Cyber thugs duped mother of an SGPGI doctor of ₹18 lakh and kept her under digital house arrest for a week in Lucknow.
The criminals intimidated the 69-year-old woman, a retired teacher, so much that she agreed to everything. As she did not know how to do online transactions, she was compelled by the criminals to go to the bank and keep transferring money to their accounts.
The matter unfolded when the woman’s abnormal behaviour raised suspicions in the minds of her son and daughter-in-law. When they asked her about it, she told them everything. The doctor filed a formal complaint at the cyber police station on Friday, said police.
The victim woman identified as Shikha Haldar, originally from Panchkula, Haryana, lives in the old campus of PGI area. Her son and daughter-in-law are doctors in SGPGI.
“I received a call on my mobile on November 5 at 10am. The caller introduced himself as a customer agent of SBI. He told me there has been a credit card fraud in my name. Before I could say anything to him, he said that my call was being transferred to Mumbai Crime Branch. Then he disconnected the call. After some time, I received a WhatsApp call and the caller introduced himself as an officer of Mumbai Crime Branch,” the woman told police in her complaint.
“The caller asked for my Aadhaar number and account details and said that a case of money laundering was registered in my name and that my bank accounts had to be investigated. He said that he was now transferring the call to CBI.”
Now another called threatened to send the whole family to jail, stated the woman.
“I was scared and gave the criminals all the details of my bank accounts. He further tried to negotiate with me and said the case could be settled if I gave him money. When I told him I cannot transfer the money online, he told me to go to the nearest bank and deposit the money,” she said.
The woman went to a nearby bank and withdrew money from the account and deposited ₹5 lakh in the given account. “Similarly, for 7 days, I deposited about ₹18 lakh in different accounts,” she told police.
She further told police that the callers used to make video calls every hour. “However, on November 12, they called on WhatsApp and asked me to break all the FDs and deposit them in their account. I got suspicious and told my son about it,” she said.
