Software engineer and his wife digitally arrested and harassed for two weeks lose ₹47.7 lakh

In another case of courier scam, cybercrooks targeted a 40-year-old software engineer and his wife and harassed them for two weeks before robbing ₹47.7 lakh of their savings.

In another case of courier scam, cybercrooks targeted a 40-year-old software engineer and his wife and harassed them for two weeks before robbing ₹47.7 lakh of their savings.

Based on the complaint from the victim from Ramamurthynagar, the east division cybercrime police registered a case of cheating and under the provisions of the IT Act on Sunday.

In his complaint, the software engineer said that on May 18, he received an automated call from a number which was showing a reputed courier company’s name, informing him that a parcel delivery in his name had returned to Mumbai from Taiwan. Confused, the victim asked for the details of the parcel, following which a person, identifying himself as Anil Kumar, the executive of the courier company, replied that the parcel contained five passports, three credit cards, 200 g MDMA, a laptop, and ₹35,000. Anil Kumar also claimed that they had informed the narcotics bureau of the Mumbai police and connected the call to whom he claimed was a Mumbai crime branch officer.

“The officer asked me to come on a Skype call stating that I am a suspect in a drug trafficking and money laundering case and needed to be questioned,” the victim said. The nightmare began as the victim and his wife were bombarded with calls from people claiming to be Omkar, “circle inspector, Mumbai crime branch”, Ravi, “junior officer”, and Milind Bharambe, “DCP, Mumbai crime branch”.

They initially asked the victim to come to Mumbai for an investigation. The callers grilled the couple with all sorts of questions to get their background before asking them to move all their savings online to their account for verification. The accused had even shared an “authorisation letter from the RBI”, which the complainant later shared with the police and it was found to be fake.

The victim closed all mutual funds and moved the money to his personal bank account from where he transferred 87% of the total savings to different accounts mentioned by the accused. The accused continued to ask him to close the rest of the mutual funds and transfer the money. Suspecting something fishy, the victim shared this with his friends who suggested that he approach the police.

The police are now trying to track down the accounts to stop the online transactions and communicating with the banks concerned to stop the payments.