The complainant was specifically asked to get in touch with an officer from the “Department” named “Ajay Kumar Bansal” on a cell phone number and also on Skype, the FIR stated. (Representational/ Pixabay) In the second such incident in 10 days, a 31-year-old woman from Pune lost Rs 92 lakh to a cyber fraud in which the perpetrators posed as courier company staffers, and “Mumbai cyber crime department” officers, and claimed that a “parcel containing drugs had been sent in her name to Taiwan”.
Officers said one of the suspects used the name of an IPS officer from Maharashtra to dupe the woman whose husband had passed away recently. The same name was used on March 27 to dupe a woman software engineer from Pune of about Rs 6 lakh after she was told that her accounts were being used for “international terror funding”, officers said.
An FIR in the latest case was registered on Wednesday at the Cyber Crime police station of Pune City by the woman. According to the FIR, the complainant got a call around 10.40 am on April 2 from a person who identified himself as an “executive” of a courier company. The “executive” said a parcel had been sent to Taiwan in the woman’s name and drugs weighing around 800 grams had been found in it.
The woman was told to contact officials from the “Mumbai Cyber Crime Department”, the FIR stated. She was specifically asked to get in touch with an officer from the “Department” named “Ajay Kumar Bansal” on a cell phone number and also on Skype, the FIR stated. The profile of the officer on the app had a logo of Mumbai Police, the officials said.
In phone and video calls with the man claiming to be “Ajay Kumar Bansal”, the woman was told that a probe had been initiated into the recovery of drugs from the parcel sent in her name, the FIR stated. She was further told that the “hackers were trying to siphon off money from her bank accounts and suggested she temporarily transfer it to three bank accounts given by him”, it said.
“Fearing loss of money from her bank accounts, the complainant transferred a total of Rs 91,94,130 to the three accounts provided by the fraudsters over multiple transfers on April 3 and 4. Later, when the complainant tried to contact the number, it was switched off. After a discussion with her family members, the complainant realised that she had been cheated and approached the cyber crime cell,” said a police officer.
When contacted, Senior Inspector Minal Patil, in-charge of the cyber crime police station in Pune, said, “We have launched a probe into the cell numbers, online profiles and bank accounts used by the cyber criminals.”
In the last week of March, a fraudster who identified himself as “Bansal” cheated a software engineer in Pune of about Rs 6 lakh saying her ID and bank account had been misused for “international terror funding”.
The caller said the complainant’s Aadhaar details and photo were misused for six transactions from her bank account. The caller then sought Rs 98,326 for verification of each of the transactions while sending her a fake ID card identifying himself as “Bansal”.
The complainant made the online transfers to two bank accounts before realising that she had been cheated and approached the police.