Nerul sr citizen loses Rs 1.25L while activating SIM card

Petroleum firm marketing head duped of `1L in hotel booking

A 74-year-old Seawoods resident lost Rs 1.25 lakh from his account while transferring Rs 10 to activate his mobile SIM card. The complainant had downloaded an app to facilitate the transfer, the police said.

The complainant’s SIM was not functioning for the past two months. The police said that on March 31, he received a call on his another number where the caller identified himself as the customer care executive of the mobile service provider and offered assistance.

The caller asked the complainant to check on the service provider app whether the number was active. Later, he asked the complainant to transfer Rs 10 through the app. He transferred the amount, but the caller said that he did not receive it. The caller then asked him to download a support app and transfer the money, and the complainant followed the instructions.

However, soon after he transferred the money, he received three OTPs on his mobile and three transactions of Rs 25,000, Rs 49,999, and Rs 50,000 were withdrawn from his bank account. When the complainant contacted the customer care of the bank, he was informed that he had been cheated. Later, he approached the NRI Coastal police and lodged a complaint.

A 49-year-old marketing national head of a petroleum company was recently duped to the tune of Rs 1.08 lakh by a cyber fraudster on the pretext of hotel booking. The complainant was searching online for hotels when he came across a website and contacted the number. A case of cheating and impersonation has been registered at Bandra police station under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

The complainant said in his statement to the police that he travels around the country in connection to work and was scheduled to be in Pune for an April 20-22 meeting. Subsequently, the man searched for a threestar hotel and came across Tarawade Clarks Inn, which had a decent rating and immediately contacted the number from the search engine.

A man who identified himself as Roy answered the call and connected the complainant to a manager named Raj. During the conversation, Raj asked the complainant to register himself to be eligible for booking, following which he sought his personal details and asked him to transfer Rs 5,000. However, later he said he hadn’t received the money and that the booking cannot be confirmed.

In order to confirm the booking, he asked the complainant to transfer Rs 18,085, only to learn that there was an issue at the banking end and was then asked to transfer Rs 42,588 with the promise of a refund. When the demands kept on increasing, the complainant grew suspicious and stopped answering the calls made by Raj and Roy.

Curious, the man checked the hotel's website and found some other contact number in the list. When he called the contact number from the website, he learnt that he had been duped as there were no employees by the name of Raj and Roy. The hotel staff also informed him that another woman was cheated using the same modus operandi.

The man immediately approached the Bandra Police and lodged a complaint, acting on which a case was registered against unidentified accused. While no arrests have been made yet, the police are investigating the matter.