A 49-year-old woman recently faced a double whammy from the cyber-fraudsters. The victim was first approached by a scammer offering her easy returns on investment in bitcoins. The victim fell for this scam and ended up losing money. When the victim did not receive her returns, she surfed on the internet to complain to the consumer court and came across a fraudulent number who claimed to be a consumer court representative. The fraudster on the pretext of helping the victim, induced her to download a remote access app on her phone and managed to siphon money from her bank account. The victim had lost Rs 20.27 lakh to the fraudsters in over 60 transactions.
Details of fraud
According to the police, the victim is a resident of Kharghar and her son works in the USA. On December 08, the victim had received a message on Telegram app about a bitcoin investment plan which stated that she could earn Rs 18000 on investment of Rs 3000. The scammers also shared investment receipts with the victim which reflected her profits generated on investments. From December 08 till December 21, the accused scammers induced the victim to invest a considerable amount of money in different beneficiary bank accounts and later became incommunicado.
The victim then realised that she had been duped and in order to complain against fraudsters, she surfed on the internet to get the contact number of the consumer court. On January 21, the victim came across a fraudulent number of the consumer court representative. She contacted the said number and narrated her ordeal after which the fraudster induced the victim to download a remote access application on her phone. He then induced the victim to share her bank account details and managed to siphon money from her bank accounts. The victim lost Rs 20.27 lakh to the fraudsters in both the incidents in 62 transactions. She then reported the matter to the cyber crime portal.
Case registered
An offence has been registered in the matter on Thursday under sections 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (punishment for identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
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