A 23-year-old woman working as an IT support engineer had recently fallen victim to a courier scam. He was targeted by a group of fraudsters, who pretended to be a customer service operator of a courier company, customs and police officers to trick him via WhatsApp/normal call and intimidate victims into paying money by saying it belonged to a package. They contained illegal elements. Scammers forced the victim to take out and pay off a personal loan.
According to police, the victim, originally from Ahmednagar, works in a private company in Mumbai. On October 25, the victim received a call from an unknown mobile number and the caller told him that he was calling from a courier company and that a package destined for Thailand containing unauthorized items such as a laptop, pen drive, clothing and other unauthorized items had been intercepted. MDMA 950 grams (drugs). The victim was then told that the call had been forwarded to the police and that the victim could inform the police if the package in question did not belong to her.
Scammers threatened victim with legal action
A man claiming to be a police officer then told the victim he needed to give a video statement via Skype. The victim then received a Skype call containing the Mumbai NCB Department User ID. The caller then told the victim that his Aadhaar card and mobile number were linked to different banks and unauthorized money laundering was taking place through them. The fraudsters then put the victim in fear of legal action and forced him to take a personal loan of Rs 5 lakh from his bank and send it to the bank account provided by them.
Police filed a case against fraudsters
The victim then sent his loan request to his bank’s mobile app and managed to get a loan of Rs 4.91 crore. The victim then sent Rs 5 lakh to the fraudsters. But when the fraudsters asked him to send another Rs 5 lakh, the victim suspected something was wrong and approached the police last week. Police have registered a case under sections 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and 66D (cheating by impersonation using computer resources) of the Information Technology Act.
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news source (www.freepressjournal.in)
