Bank executive duped of

MUMBAI: A 48-year-old senior bank executive registered an offence after she fell victim to a fraudulent scheme, losing ₹4.5 lakh to unknown frauds who posed as police and courier company executives. The case has been registered based on the complaint lodged by the woman, a resident of Parel, who works as senior vice president with the Goregaon branch of Bank.
“On Friday, she decided to work from home and around 9am received a pre-recorded message from somebody posing as a FedEx official claiming that her courier could not be delivered and if she wanted to know further about it, she should press 3. When she pressed 3, a woman connected with her claiming that her courier to Taiwan was caught, as it had 3 passports, a laptop, psychoactive drugs MDMA, and credit cards,” said the police officer.
The complainant told the accused that she had not sent any such parcel to anybody, said the police officer. However, the woman at the other end told her that her unique identity card number – Aadhaar number was being used for the same parcel. When the complainant asked for the number, the accused expressed her inability to do so on the phone, citing “security reasons.”
“When the complainant asked what she should do, the woman suggested she should file a complaint with the police and immediately transferred the call to the police. When the call was transferred, a man came on the line and identified himself as one Vikram Singh from the Mumbai crime branch,” the officer said.
After speaking about the case for a while, Singh purportedly asked the complainant to download Skype and for a few seconds she saw a video, but later the ‘officer’ told her that being part of an investigative agency he could not be seen in a video call but promised to help and guide her.
The frauds later enquired about all her investments and bank accounts. They told her she would be required to deposit around ₹4,53,252 in their bank account to check if the complainant’s Aadhaar card had been compromised, promising that the transaction would be reversed in 30 minutes, and she would get back her money. They meanwhile asked her to continue the video call, however, the call later got disconnected, said the police officer.
After she transferred the amount of ₹4,53,252, as sought by the frauds, the complainant did not get any call, nor did she get her money back. She tried to contact the callers, but could not and realised that she was cheated, and approached the Kalachowkie police station and reported the fraud.
“We have registered an offence under sections 419 (personation for cheating) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation using computer resources) of the Information Technology Act, 2000,” said the police officer. The officer said that the case had been registered against unidentified persons.