Gurgaon: ‘Bank employee’ takes account details, dupes man of Rs50,000

The victim, a labourer, had just submitted documents to open an account in a leading private bank

Answering a call on March 30, Uma Shankar Mondal had no clue he had walked into a trap as he voluntarily shared his banking details with a caller, who claimed to be customer service executive of the bank.

Police said the caller sought the man’s personal details for ‘account verification’ (Representative image/Shutterstock)

He had been saving his hard-earned money for months and had just submitted documents to open an account in a leading private bank.

Police said the caller sought his personal details for ‘account verification’. When Mondal gave all the data, the ‘bank executive’ asked for account details of another bank. He said that for opening a new account and its verification, it was mandatory to give information about alternate bank accounts, if any, the police said.

Mondal, a labourer who has an account in a government bank, said he unwittingly shared his banking details with the caller.

Few hours later, he received three text messages informing him about three transactions from his account. A sum of Rs49,990 had been debited from his account.

“Uma Shankar filed a complaint the next day, which was forwarded to our cyber cell. The cyber cell sent it back to us on Wednesday confirming that he had, indeed, been cheated,” Vikas Kaushik, station house officer (SHO), Sector 29 police station, said.

Kaushik said they registered an FIR under IPC Section 420 (cheating) and Section 66D of the IT Act (cheating by impersonation using computers).

“While Mondal is not literate, I have seen many highly educated people falling prey to such fraud,” Kaushik said. He said the police will soon begin an investigation into the case.