99-year-old scammed by fake power company rep

99-year-old from Juhu scammed of ₹2.78 lakh by fake power company rep for unpaid bill, sharing credit card-PAN details. Police investigating.

Mumbai: A 99-year-old resident from Juhu fell victim to an online scam, losing ₹2.78 lakh to a conman who posed as a representative of a power company on Saturday to fraudulently acquire his credit card - PAN card details.

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The victim, identified as EA Ashok Kumar, a bicycle shop owner living with his wife, was at home on Saturday when he received a phone call and a text message. The communication purportedly informed him of an unpaid electricity bill, threatening disconnection by 9:30pm on the same day. Responding to the alert, Kumar dialed the provided number, only to connect with a fraudulent individual posing as a Tata Electricity executive. The impersonator falsely accused Kumar of neglecting the previous month’s bill payment.

When Kumar informed the conman that he had paid the bill, the caller allegedly said that the payment had not been updated in the system and therefore asked Kumar to share his credit card details and PAN Card number to update the payment in the system. The person asked him to share the one-time password (OTP) information which is required to update the billing system. After Kumar hung up, he received four messages from his bank that ₹2.78 lakh had been debited from his account.

After realising that he had been duped, Kumar approached the Juhu police and filed a complaint on Saturday. The cyber department of the police station contacted the nodal officer of the bank to freeze the account to which the money was transferred from his card.

“We are tracking down the number that the victim communicated with,” said a police officer of the Juhu police station.