MNC executive duped of ₹20,000 by man posing as bank employee

An executive of a private company was duped of ₹20,000 by a person posing as an employee of a public sector bank. The suspect asked for his credit card details on the pretext of verification for issuing redemption coupons, said the police.

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According to the police, the victim, Aditya Pareek, a resident of Sector 30, lost the amount in two transactions in May last year. Pareek, in his complaint to police, said that he received a call on May 7 from a person posing as a bank employee, who asked him to share his credit card details. “He told me that I have some pending coupons waiting to be redeemed. He then asked me to share the details, saying that the coupons can only be received on a card that has less than 70% credit utilisation. He then told me that the coupons can be received on my debit card as well, and asked me to the share the card details via IVR mechanism,” Pareek said.

“After sharing all the details, I received an OTP message, stating the details of the IVR transaction. In the message, no debit or credit card details were mentioned. He then asked me to share the OTP to redeem the coupons. Upon sharing the details, my account was debited with ₹26 for the first transaction that he claimed to be the processing fee. He then initiated another OTP request, again claiming that ₹10,000 will be credited to my account. However, to the contrary, the same amount was debited” said Pareek.

Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime) said that the suspect told the victim that the debit was due to some technical error and requested him to share the OTP once more. Yet again, ₹10,000 got debited from his account. “The victim got furious, and when the suspect asked him to share for the OTP for the third time, he refused to share it. He asked him to reverse the first two transactions and warned to report him to the police,” he said.

The police said they are conducting investigation and have asked the bank to share the details of the transactions to identify the suspect. A case has been registered under sections 420 (cheating) and 379 (theft) of the Indian Penal Code(IPC) at the Cyber Crime police station.