83-yr-old duped of ₹7.72 cr by fraud posing as cop

An 83-year-old woman was scammed of ₹7.72 crore by a fake police officer claiming she’d face arrest for money laundering, prompting a police investigation.

Mumbai: An 83-year old woman was duped of ₹7.72 crores by a person posing as a Colaba police officer. The accused told her that she would be arrested in the money laundering case if she did not pay him.

83-yr-old duped of ₹7.72 cr by fraud posing as cop

When central agencies saw large sums of money being transferred from the victim’s account to an account in Cambodia they alerted the Mumbai crime branch which then went to the victim’s house in Marine Lines. At first the woman did not open her doors to them, and she later confessed that the accused, posing as a cyber police officer, had told her that fake cops might approach her. The police said that they blocked her account using a helpline number and eventually convinced her to file a complaint.

According to the police, the accused, posing as Ajay Basaria from the Colaba police station, called the victim on July 4. He told her that he was investigating a money laundering case and had found large sums of money transferred to her accounts. The police said that she then got another call from someone posing as the inspector of the Colaba police station. The second accused told her that she and her daughter could be arrested since the money transferred into her account was gotten out of criminal activity.

When the victim told the accused that she did not have any such accounts, the accused claimed that the bank accounts had been opened in her name using her Aadhaar and PAN cards. The accused then asked her to transfer the sum of money and told her that it would be returned to her after due verification.

From July 4 to August 11, the woman transferred around ₹7.72 crore to various bank accounts as directed by the accused. She told the police that the accused had even sent her forged letters to gain her confidence. She grew suspicious when she demanded her money back and the accused began asking for various extra charges despite giving her a clean chit.

Based on her complaint, on August 12 the police registered a case under sections 318 (cheating), 319 (cheating by personation), 336 (forgery), 340 (forged document or electronic record and using it as genuine), 204 (personating a public servant), 308 (extortion) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and various sections of the Information Technology Act.