Advocate loses `19L to KYC fraud

A 38-year-old South Mumbaibased advocate lost over Rs 19 lakh to KYC fraud recently. The fraudster, posing as a bank official, made the advocate share OTP and changed the password of his net banking and transferred the money.

On Saturday when the complainant was at his home in Colaba, he received a text message from an unknown number informing his card had been blocked as his Know Your Customer (KYC) details had not been updated. A contact number was also given in the message for assistance.

In the message, a purported notification link of Reserve Bank India (RBI) was provided, so the complaint did not suspect anything fishy, he stated in his police statement.

When he called back, the fraudster demanded the customer ID of his account, however, the victim informed that he didn't have the passbook at that moment. The fraudster then asked him to provide any other account linked with his mobile number. He also demanded the customer ID of that account.

After sharing the customer ID, the advocate received two OTPs on his phone and one on email which he shared with the fraudster. Soon the complainant received a text message saying that his net banking password had been changed, suspecting something was wrong, he immediately contacted the customer care number asking to freeze his account. Unfortunately at that time, the bank's system was under maintenance work and would take a few hours to sort things out.

Few hours later he was informed that his account had been frozen, however, by that time the fraudster had already transferred Rs 19.19 lakh from his account.

The Colaba police have registered an offence of impersonation and cheating along with relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.