Shop owner loses ₹6.1 lakh while attempting to book hotel rooms in Andaman

Shop owner in Mumbai loses ₹6.1 lakh to cyber fraud while booking Andaman hotel. Fraudsters posed as hotel reps, obtained card details, and siphoned money.

MUMBAI: A Chembur-based shop owner lost ₹6.1 lakh to a cyber fraud while trying to book a hotel in Andaman for a family vacation. Police officials said that under the guise of extending him a 10% discount on certain bank credit cards, the frauds obtained his card details and also lured him to share the OTPs received by him and in two transactions siphoned off the amount from his bank account.

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According to the police, the complainant is Sameer Gala, 46, who owns a potter’s shop in Chembur. He had decided to visit Andaman in February with his family for a vacation trip and searched online for hotels available on the islands and found a contact number, 8303776421, of a hotel, “Lemon Tree.” He dialed the number to book two rooms and the person who received the call identified himself as ‘Pravin,’ who posed as a hotel representative. He informed the complainant that for two rooms he would have to pay ₹17360 for a two-day stay.

The complainant asked him for a discount and the representative told him that 10 % is offered on payment through credit cards of RBL Bank, Federal Bank, and AU Small Finance Bank. The complainant checked if he would get a discount on using the credit card of one of his friends. The fraud replied in the affirmative and agreed to extend the 10% discount on his friend’s credit card, said a police officer.

The officer said that the complainant then borrowed his friend’s credit card who had an account with the RBL Bank and then called Pravin on his mobile number and shared the card details including the CVV number and asked him to book the hotel rooms.

As instructed by the frauds, the complainant twice asked his friend to share the OTPs that he received on his mobile phone, saying the first one expired due to a delay in completing the transaction. Soon thereafter, the complainant’s friend received a message that ₹4,78,460 and ₹1,32,015 had been deducted from his account linked to the credit card. Alerted by the amounts involved in the transactions, the cardholder immediately contacted Gala. They added the accused on a conference call, where the accused told them that it was a mistake, and the money would be returned to the bank account soon, added official.

The complainant and his friend then approached the RBL Bank to check if the transactions had been reversed and the amounts had been refunded. They found that the amounts had not been sent back and understood that they were duped. They then approached the Govandi police station where a case was registered against the fraud.

“The FIR has been registered, and we have recorded the call details of the numbers the fraud/s used to communicate with the complainant. We got some leads and the cyber team has been working on the complaint,” said senior inspector Sudarshan Honwadajkar of the Govandi police station.