75-year-old woman from Parel loses ₹10 Lakh to cyber frauds

Under the pretext of sending some provident fund money to her account, the fraudsters tricked the elderly woman into downloading an app, enabling screen share option, sharing debit card details and then tricked her of her money. The woman filed a complaint with the police after which FIR was registered.

MUMBAI: A 75-year-old resident of Parel has been defrauded to the tune of ₹10 lakh by two members of two separate cyber fraud groups with one posing as an employee of Provident Funds Organisation and the other as bank executive, according to an FIR registered by the Bhoiwada Police in Dadar.

HT Image

Under the pretext of sending some provident fund money to her account, the fraudsters tricked the elderly woman into downloading an app, enabling screen share option, sharing debit card details and then tricked her of her money. She filed a complaint with the police after which the FIR was registered.

The elderly woman lives with her two daughters. Her husband, who was an aircraft engineer with a private airline, died in 2018.

As per her complaint, on March 17, the elderly woman received a call from an unknown number. The caller identified herself as an employee of the Provident Funds Organisation, Delhi, and informed the elderly woman that her late husband’s Provident Fund of ₹4,80,275 was lying unclaimed in an Yes Bank account in Kasna branch of Uttar Pradesh and as he had named her as his nominee, the money would be sent to her bank account.

After she expressed her desire to claim the amount, the caller told her that she would need to pay a processing fee of ₹7,230 and after completion of the money transfer process, ₹7,000 would be refunded in her bank account.

The woman , accordingly, transferred the amount of ₹7,230 using G-Pay to the bank account provided by the woman. The woman told her that she would contact her. The next day, out of curiosity, she searched the number of Yes Bank’s Kasna branch, to check if there was really any money in her husband’s Provident Fund account, she came across a number 9064808238 of the said branch from a website called Yolo, the police said.

When she dialled the number and inquired the bank executives, if their branch disburses PF money, the executive responded in the affirmative. The bank executive then asked her to download an app ‘Rust Desk’ (a remote access app) in her mobile phone and after she installed it, the executive asked her to click on screen share button, the FIR stated.

Later, he asked her to take photo of her debit card and asked her to stay online and not to disconnect the call. “While the phone call with the ‘bank executive’ was on, a few minutes later the woman observed multiple SMSes have been received on her mobile phone. When she opened the SMSes, she was shocked to discover that in 11 transactions a total amount of ₹9,45,877 had been transferred from her bank account to other bank accounts,” said a police officer.

The police officer said with the help of the remote access app and the screen share option enabled, the fraud could see the photos of the debit card the woman had clicked and also the OTPs she received on her phone for completing the transactions.

On the elderly woman’s complaint the Bhoiwada police have registered an FIR under section 420 (cheating) of Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act and have started writing to concerned banks seeking details of the beneficiary bank accounts.

.