Rourkela Municipal College principal duped of Rs 8.84 lakhs by cyber frauds

ROURKELA: The principal of Rourkela Municipal College (RMC) lost around Rs 8.84 lakh after cyber frauds hacked into his YONO account, an integrated digital banking platform of SBI, on Wednesday evening. The victim, Paresh Pradhan (58), lodged a complaint with the Rourkela Cyber Crime police and SBI authorities in this regard on Thursday. 

Pradhan said his YONO account was disabled a few days back and recently, he visited the bank and activated it. On Wednesday evening, he received an SMS on his mobile phone which stated that his YONO account would be deactivated for want of KYC verification. The message even had a link in it. 

Without verifying the authenticity of the SMS, an unsuspecting Pradhan opened the link and a YONO app popped up on his screen. He opened it using his login and password details, provided his email address and completed the captcha verification. 

Pradhan said immediately, an OTP appeared on the screen and soon after, he received a call from an unknown person. Similar OTPs kept on arriving a few more times and simultaneously, he was getting calls on his mobile phone constantly.

When he received an SMS about deduction of Rs 24,000 from his account, Pradhan immediately disconnected the suspicious link. When he checked his account details, he found that a total of Rs 8,84,996 was withdrawn from his account through four transactions. 

Sources said tjhat Rs 24,000 was illegally transferred to an account of ICICI Bank in Jharkhand. The rest Rs 8,60,996 was transferred to three credit cards of ICICI. While police said investigation is underway, the SBI authorities have initiated necessary measures basing on Pradhan’s complaint.