Woman who duped mobile users posing as telco employee booked

A woman and her accomplices are accused of stealing customer data from a mobile service provider and duping customers of ₹4.83 lakh by posing as company representatives and asking them to pay inflated bills. The police have registered a case of cheating and data theft.

MUMBAI: The Bangur Nagar police have registered a case of cheating and data theft against a woman and her accomplices for allegedly stealing the customer data of a mobile service provider and duping its customers of ₹4.83 lakh. The accused called at least 419 customers of the service provider, posing as a company representative, and asked them to pay inflated bills.

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According to police, the complainant Mukesh Yadav, 45, a manager with the service provider, approached the police after a customer reported that he had received a call from a female employee telling him that he had been issued an inflated bill by mistake and suggested that he should pay the bill and the excess amount would be adjusted the in the next month’s bill.

The postpaid customer, Rahul Jain, had recorded the call. Suspecting some foul play, he raised a grievance with the service provider and submitted the recording. On checking the call logs, the company manager found that postpaid customers with numbers ending in 999 and 1499 had received calls from six numbers from a woman who pretended to be an employee of the company and asked them to pay their surplus bills totalling ₹4.83 lakh. The manager also found that at least 419 customers whose numbers ended with 999 and 1499 had received calls.

After receiving the complaint from Jain, Yadav approached the Bangur Nagar police and an FIR was registered against the woman. “We have registered a case under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections for the Information Technology Act for allegedly stealing the data of the mobile service provider company,” said a police officer from Bangur Nagar police station.

Police suspect the data theft is an insider job and are checking through the profiles of all who have quit the company in the recent past.