Cyber frauding cases are on the rise where people get calls from fraudsters seeking their bank account details and dupe them once they have it. One such incident came to light again, where a Bollywood singer and ‘Indian Idol 10’ contestant Avanti Patel and her sister were duped by fraudsters of Rs 1.7 lakh.
According to Mumbai Mirror, the incident took place on December 31 at around 2.30 am, when Avanti Patel received a call from a person who introduced himself as bank executive Pankaj Sharma. He asked her why had she not activated the debit card and told her that he would help her do it. She had recently received a new debit card, but the card had not been activated. The caller then asked her for the expiry date on her old debit card, and the strange thing is that he already other details including her bank balance.
The caller told Avanti that she would receive a message which she must forward to a mobile number. After sometime she received a message and forwarded the same message to the number which the caller gave her. But she was shocked later to see to that Rs 50,000 was deducted from her bank account in three transactions. Avanti then called back the caller, after which she was told that the money would come back in 10 minutes. The caller then told Avanti that in order to send back the money he needed details of her other bank accounts, but she told him that she didn’t have another bank account.
But later the caller asked for account details of her family members, that is when Avanti told him the expiry date of sister’s debit card from the same bank, the caller also confirmed all bank details of her sister’s. Avanti was again told to share the message she had received, this when Rs 50,000 was debited from her sister’s account. The caller again promised that money would be sent back, but later when she tried calling the fraudster’s numbers which were switched off. That is when she realised that she was being duped and approached Sion police station to register a complaint. During the investigation, the cops found out that the fraudster created and used a fake UPI account to carry out the fraudulent transactions.