Mumbai: Bollywood music director clicks on weblink, loses Rs 20,000

MUMBAI: A Bollywood music director was duped of Rs 20,000 after he believed a text message which said his bank account would be suspended for not updating his Pan card. To avoid account deactivation, he clicked on a link sent to him and uploaded his banking details, thus helping the fraudster siphon money from his account.
The police said that despite repeated warnings and alerts that are being sent out by banks to customers, people continue to get intimidated by such fraudulent messages and end up falling prey to such cyber criminals.
In the music director’s case, an offence was registered of cheating was registered at Powai police station on Friday. The fraud occurred on May 1 when the music director was at home in the evening. “He clicked on on a link and he lost money after he entered the one-time password,” said an officer at Powai police station.
The cyber team at the police station has sought details from the bank to get details of the account to which the money was credited. Also, the police team is collecting details of the internet protocol address of the link in order to track down the creator of the link as it would help in nabbing the accused, said the police officer.
The police said that the director has intimated the bank about the fraudulent transaction to pre-empt any further mischief in his account. In his complaint to the police, the music director has stated that he had clicked on the weblink sent to him as he got worried after reading the text message that his account would be suspended. He has also said that the link directed him to a page where he entered his Pan Card details and after pressing the save option, he got an OTP. “...I realised that I was duped when Rs20000 was debited,” he has said in the complaint.
Mumbai police have managed to solve just 52 of 1,552 cases of bank card frauds registered over the past 16 months.