IT professional loses Rs 1.97 lakh in cyber fraud with offenders posing as narcotics department officials

The incident came to light on Tuesday, when the woman from Ghodapdeo lodged the complaint with the police, an official said.

As per her complaint, she received a call on Tuesday by an unidentified person, who claimed to be a representative of a courier company. He told the complainant that her parcel for Taiwan was not processed due to some difficulties

“The victim told the caller that she has not sent any parcel to Taiwan. The caller told her that if the parcel does not belong to her then she should approach the police online as it contained five passports, two credit cards and some narcotic substance,” the official said. “The caller then transferred the call to another person, who claimed that he was from the police department and as the case relates to narcotics, he transferred the call to the official of ‘narcotics department’.”

The person, who posed as narcotics official, asked her Aadhaar number and told her that it was linked to three bank accounts of criminals and to sort out the issue she should download Skype, an instant messenger app. Accordingly, the victim downloaded Skype in her phone, following which the caller gave her his app ID, which mentioned ‘narcotics department’ in the username.

The victim and accused both connected with each other through Skype and the accused sent some photographs of offenders to whom police had caught and told the victim those were the same criminals, whose bank accounts linked with her Aadhaar number, the official added.

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He then sent her a letter, which had a mention of the ‘narcotics department’. He asked the victim about her bank accounts and told her to deposit Rs 98,888 each from two accounts for verification. He also told her that the amount will be returned in her account after verification. After waiting for some time, the victim realised that she has been cheated as the money was not deposited back into her account, following which she went to the police station and lodged her complaint against the unidentified fraudsters.

Based on the complaint, a first information report (FIR) under section 419, 420 of IPC and section 66 (C), 66 (D) was registered against the fraudsters.