Techie ‘digitally arrested’ for 3 days by cybercriminals, loses ₹31.3 lakh
The Hindu
26-year-old software engineer loses ₹31.3 lakh in courier scam, struggles to recover funds despite police intervention.
A 26-year-old software engineer from Cox Town lost ₹31.3 lakh from her bank accounts after becoming a victim of a courier scam and being “ digitally arrested” by cybercrooks.
The bank allegedly refused to help her block the transactions, and the cybercrime helpline did not work in time. Even though she managed to file a complaint, finally, the East Division cybercrime police had to allegedly struggle to convince the bank to get the details of transactions and managed to save only 10% of the total money.
The incident unfolded on Monday when she was at her office around 5.30 p.m. The caller, introducing himself as a courier company representative, said there was a parcel in her name destined for Taiwan containing drugs, passports, and laptops. Based on this, a case had been filed in the Mumbai crime branch. The caller also shared the victim’s Aadhaar number, name, and phone number to convince her that the call was genuine.
She received another call, now on Skype, and this time, the caller claimed to be Balsingh Rajputh, DCP, cybercrime, who told her that there was a case and he needed to question her.
The caller asked her not to cut the call and not to inform anyone until the inquiry was over. Shocked, the victim followed the instructions for three days. On the pretext of inquiry, the caller accessed all the bank details and instructed her to transfer the money to check if there was any money laundering happening from her account.
The caller even assured the victim that the cash transactions would be reverted within 50 minutes after verification. The fraud came to light when the victim did not get a response and tried to call back.
Realizing that she was conned, the victim started checking the internet for the police control room number to report the case and found several articles online about the scam. Even though the husband, a software engineer, was at home, he was not allowed to be involved.
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