Photo: ARUN SANKAR | AFP
Kochi: Amid the surge in online financial scams, a housewife in Aluva lost Rs 77,000 after falling prey to a fake customer care number online. But the timely intervention of the Ernakulam Rural District Cyber Crime Police helped the woman to recover the money.
The incident took place after the woman searched customer care number of Flipkart on google and contacted a fake customer care to find out if there was any discount offer for smart TVs for Diwali. Later, the scamsters convinced her to fill a form send via a link to her phone to avail the discount.
She was also asked to provide her bank account details, name and UPI ID. The housewife provided all the information. Soon after, she received an SMS and the scamsters requested her to forward the message to a mobile number they provided. The fraudsters managed to get access to her bank account after she followed all the steps. The culprits looted 75,000 from her bank account by purchasing three gift vouchers worth Rs 25,000 each. They also transferred Rs 2,000 from the woman's account.
The incident was later brought to the attention of district police chief K Karthik. Following this, a special investigation team found that the fraudsters used this amount to buy gift vouchers worth Rs 50,000 from online shopping sites and further made an additional purchase of Rs 25,000. Subsequently, due to the timely intervention of the police, the bank transactions carried out by the fraudsters were frozen. Later, the whole amount was returned to the housewife's account.
It has been found that an online fraud group based in north India was behind the incident.
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