Thane woman loses ₹12 lakh in digital arrest fraud after scammer posed as police officer | Representative Image
Mumbai: A 54-year-old woman has fallen prey to scammers and lost Rs 12 lakh in digital arrest fraud. The scammers on the pretext of getting her banking details verified, forced her to take a personal loan from her mobile banking app and induced her to send the money in three online transactions.
According to the police, the complainant is a resident of Thane. On September 20, she received a phone call from an unknown person who claimed to be from a courier company from Andheri. The caller stated that a parcel booked by the complainant for Iran containing four passports, a laptop, a pendrive, four credit cards and 420 grams of MD have been intercepted by the Customs department. The caller also claimed that a case in this regard has been registered by the NCB.
Later, the caller said that he will connect the call with the police. A scammer who then posed as a police officer spoke to the woman. On the pretext of getting the complainant’s banking details verified, the scammer induced her to take a personal loan of Rs 13.50 lakh from her mobile banking app with an assurance that the entire money would be credited in her account once the verification process is done, police said.
They then forced her to transfer Rs 12 lakh in three online transactions. Later when the complainant did not receive the said amount in her bank account, she realised that she had been scammed.
The complainant then approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter last week. A case has been registered in the matter under sections 66C (identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
