A 27-year-old woman from Mumbai’s Dahisar lost Rs 5.35 lakh to internet fraud when she tried ordering a bottle of whisky online. The woman, who works for a private company, called a wine shop listed online where people posing as sales executives cheated her on the pretext of delivering the liquor to her house, police said. The large sum was withdrawn from the woman’s bank account in a span of 12 hours, they added.
According to police, they have written to the woman’s bank to freeze the accounts of the accused and see to it if the money could be sealed.
The woman was first asked to put codes via payment services such as Google Pay and was later persuaded to increase her debit card limit in order to get her money back, as per a report published by Hindustan Times. Police said when the woman increased her card limit, more money was withdrawn from her account.
According to a complaint filed by the woman, around 9 pm on Tuesday, she contacted a wine shop in Dahisar listed online, called Silver Wines, as she needed a whisky bottle to decorate and design a cake. “The woman was told by a person at the wine shop that though the shop was closed, he can deliver a bottle in 10 minutes and asked her to send money through a QR code. The woman accordingly made a payment of Rs 550. She was then told that one of the delivery executives will soon call her,” the HT report quoted a police officer as saying.
Police said the woman soon received a call from a person, who identified himself as a sales executive, telling her that registration was compulsory to get the alcohol delivered and another executive will help her. The next person who called asked her to put the number of a receipt received earlier, numbered “19,051”, on Google Pay but following that she got a message that the same amount had been debited from her account, police added.
Police further said when the woman told the person on the other end of the line about the issue, he asked her not to worry about it and said there was an error in the system and she should redo the whole process. Once the woman did that, Rs 19,051 was again debited from her account, they added.
When the woman asked the person to return her money, he told her that there was a problem and the system was debiting the amount instead of crediting it, police said.
“He told her to give her bank account details and asked her to share debit/credit card details so that she could get her money back. The woman shared her CVV number and card validity details and even increased the limit on it. The fraudsters later extracted Rs 48,000 and Rs 96,045 from her account and told her that all the money will be transferred to her at once, and for that to happen, she should transfer Rs 95,051 and Rs 1,71,754 to them. This is how the woman ended up losing Rs 5.35 lakh till Wednesday noon after which the accused stopped answering her calls,” a police officer was quoted as saying.
Read the Latest News and Breaking News here
Comments
0 comment