Mumbai cyber safe: Senior citizen loses ₹9.53 lakh to fraudulent bank helpline

Mumbai: The Bhoiwada police are on the lookout for a fraudster who duped a 75-year-old woman to the tune of Rs9.53 lakh by posing as a bank executive.

The complainant received a call from a customer care executive, who induced her to download a remote access app and siphoned money from her bank account.

How the victim was duped

The complainant, a resident of Parel, received the call on March 17, from a woman informing her that her late husband’s Rs4.80 lakh insurance amount is lying in a Kasna-based bank (Uttar Pradesh) and that she is the nominee. She was asked to pay Rs7,230 to claim the entitlement.

The elderly woman transferred the amount into a bank account number provided by the caller, who promised to call the next day. When she did not receive any call, she surfed the internet to get the contact number of the bank and came across a fraudulent number where the executive induced her to download a remote access app on her phone and siphoned a hefty amount.

Puneet Kapoor, president of Products, Alternate Channels & Customer Experience Delivery at Kotak Mahindra Bank said, “Fraudsters are continuously trying to find different routes to dupe unsuspecting customers. It is in the interest of customers to check the veracity of such messages before responding. Ideally, they need to confirm the ‘handle’ from which such messages are sent. Unless the handle represents the bank / organisation’s name, they should not respond to it. Any such SMS, where the sender has a private phone number is bound to be spurious.”

Mumbai police cautions citizens

According to Cyber Crime Cell under Crime Branch of Mumbai police , the most common form of online frauds are related to banks, online commerce platforms where fraudsters, posing as bank /platform officials, convince the victim to share OTP, KYC updates and sometimes send the links to be clicked to access bank accounts.“People should know that no bank or institution is authorised to demand for bank details or PIN numbers. Unfortunately, educated people are falling prey to online frauds and losing lakhs of rupees,” explained DCP Cyber Crime, Balsingh Rajput.