BENGALURU: A 47-year-old woman, who wanted to sell her used mobile phone, lost Rs 95,000 to online fraudsters on Tuesday. Aparna Thakkar Suri, a resident of Jalavayu Towers in NGEF Layout, filed a complaint with Byappanahalli police. According to the complaint, she recently posted an advertisement on the e-commerce platform OLX to sell her phone. One Mohammed Bilal contacted her in this regard. Bilal agreed to the price she quoted. So, Aparna raised a request on the Swiggy Go app to deliver the phone to Bilal. 

Around 8.45 pm, a delivery boy picked up the phone. At 11 pm, Bilal called her and informed her that the delivery boy took back the phone saying that the order had been cancelled. Aparna immediately called the delivery boy, who told her the same thing. He told her that he had kept the phone in the Swiggy office and asked Aparna to contact Swiggy customer care. 

Aparna searched for the customer care number on Google and she found one. On calling the number, the person who picked up introduced himself as a customer care executive and told Aparna to place the request again. He said that she needed to click the link he would send her and asked her to pay Rs 3 to Swiggy’s account. 

Accordingly, Aparna clicked on the link, which took her to an online form. She filled it up and entered her UPI pin. The moment she submitted the form, she received a call from another mobile number. The caller told Aparna to send the updated link to five different mobile numbers he gave. She thought it was procedure and did what was asked. 

Within a few minutes, she received a message stating that Rs 95,000 had been transferred to some other account. Aparna immediately blocked her account. “This is organised online fraud. The phone numbers available on Google, Just Dial and other portals, are sometimes used by hackers. The moment these numbers are used, hackers get bank account details and hack them to transfer money,” Aparna told TNIE.
An investigating officer said, “The numbers sent to Aparna are now switched off. We are trying to get the details of the bank accounts to which the money was transferred.”