An unidentified cyber hacker/thief allegedly cheated a 25-year-old man from Powai for Rs 1.6 lakh on Saturday, 22nd May. The fraud was allegedly committed under the pretext of buying electrical appliances for sale on the hacker’s website. Powai police are investigating the case against the unidentified person under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.
The complainant, who works for an entertainment company, was called by a man named Mukesh Kumar on May 22. The thief introduced himself as a seller of second-hand electronic goods, and the plaintiff expressed interest in purchasing the products put up for sale on the website. It was decided to buy a refrigerator and a foot massage machine at a price of Rs 22,000.
The cyber thief then sent him a QR code and asked him to scan it to proceed to payment. The complainant lost money in a series transaction while scanning the QR code. After that, Mukesh asked the complainant to transact through net banking due to an error in the earlier transaction. But this time too, the money was debited from his account. Stating that these transaction processes are complicated and take a while, Mukesh asked the complainant to do the transaction again and money was debited from his account once again.
“Mukesh sent me a QR code for payment and asked me to scan it through my Paytm app. As soon as I scanned the QR code, Rs 10,000 was debited from my account. When I asked Mukesh about it, he told me to repeat the process six times to get my money back in my account. In this transaction, Rs. 59,998 was debited from my account. When asked about this, he said that there seems to be a problem in the payment of UPI,” the complainant said to the police.
“After some time, Mukesh sent a screenshot of Rs 1.5 lakh having been sent to the complainant’s account. But during the investigation, it came to the notice of the plaintiff that no such amount was credited to his account. Mukesh started ignoring the plaintiff’s call and the plaintiff realized that he had been cheated,” police said.
Following a complaint lodged by the plaintiff, the Powai police have started investigating into the matter and a letter has been issued to the bank’s nodal officer to stop the payment and wait for further instructions from the authorities.