The senior technical director of National Informatics Centre (NIC), Government of India, allegedly lost ₹1 lakh to a conman who obtained his bank account details on the pretext of upgrading the account.
R. Venkatesh filed a complaint with the cyber crime cell on Wednesday with a request to track down the culprit.
In his complaint, Mr. Venkatesh said he received a call last Tuesday from a man claiming to be an executive of the bank and told him that his account needs to be upgraded. He obliged and shared the details, including the OTP and account details.
Within minutes, he received an alert that ₹1 lakh had been transferred from his account through UPI (Unified Payments Interface, an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India facilitating inter-bank transactions). He tried to call back the person, but the phone was switched off, following which Mr. Venkatesh approached the police and filed a complaint the next day.
Internal Security Division (ISD) chief Ashit Mohan Prasad too had recently fallen prey to internet fraudsters who took ₹2 lakh after taking details of his debit card from him.
Senior police officials said the cyber crime cell has registered over 3,000 complaints about online fraud from this January to October. Banks never ask for OTP and bank account details on the phone, and people should not entertain such calls, they added.
The police have even launched awareness programmes on social media alerting the general public about such frauds.
MD of a private firm duped
Men posing as business development executives allegedly duped the managing director (MD) of a private firm of ₹60,000.
The duo approached Samar Solutions Private Limited, which deals in the sale and repair of solar geysers, and proposed to get business leads for the firm, on Monday.
The accused spoke to Soumya, an executive of the firm, and downloaded two apps on her official mobile phone. They later met the MD Murthyunjaya Patil. During their conversation, they managed to get his account details.
The duo left and promised to come back. Later, they called Ms. Soumya asking her to replace the SIM card in her phone — in which the apps had been downloaded — with that of the MD’s. Mr. Patil obliged.
During this time, the accused transferred ₹60,000 from Mr. Patil’s account.
The cheating came to light when Mr. Patil received a transaction alert on his mobile phone. He tried to call the duo but their phone was not reachable following which he approached the cyber crime cell and filed a complaint .
The police said that this was a novel technique adopted by the conmen to stop transaction alerts.
