THE 73-year-old chief executive officer (CEO) of a private firm was allegedly duped of Rs 9.78 lakh by fraudsters under the pretext of providing him a ‘premium elite credit card’.
According to police, the fraudsters had even sent him a link and an Android phone, in which he entered his bank account details and his sim card on the instructions of the caller, after which the money was siphoned off. In his complaint, the CEO, a resident of Parel, said he was in his office on September 21 when he got a call from an unknown person. The caller pretended to be a bank official and informed him about the ‘Diners Club Premium Elite Card of Diners Club International’.
“I was told that I will get a limit of up to Rs 52 lakh on Diners Club International credit card, airline allowance throughout India and no fees will be charged on the card,” said the complainant in his statement to police.
The CEO said he liked the offer and wished to pursue it. “For that, he asked me to fill in all the information on the link that he had sent. Minutes later, he sent me another link on WhatsApp, where all my card details that I had previously entered were already mentioned,” read the statement of the complainant. The businessman was further asked to download an application on his mobile. But as he was using an iPhone, the caller told him that he needed an Android phone to download the application. On the same day, the fraudster sent his accomplice to the CEO’s office at Nariman Point with an Android phone.
“The caller then asked the complainant to remove his sim card from the iPhone and insert it into the phone that he had sent. He was asked to do that on two days… the businessman followed his instruction… on September 25, he was alerted that a sum of Rs 9.78 lakh has been siphoned off from his credit card,” said a police officer. Later, when the CEO reached out to the bank’s customer care, he learnt that he had been duped, following which he filed a complaint.