Mumbai Woman Duped Of Rs 20 Lakh By Fraudsters Posing As Customs Officials – News18

There are numerous reports of people losing their money or getting scammed, just by receiving an unknown call. One such case has been reported from Mumbai, where a woman lost Rs 20 lakh because of fraudsters posing as Mumbai Customs officials. She is an employee at a private bank in Mumbai. According to the complaint, the woman – who is a resident of Thane – got a call on July 22. She was informed by the caller that a parcel, which contained 140 gms of mephedrone drugs, five passports, two credit cards, shoes, and clothes was intercepted by the Customs and that an FIR or First Information Report was registered against her at Andheri Police Station.

After hearing this, the woman insisted that that parcel was not hers, and then the caller asked the victim to give her residential address, Aadhaar card number, and email address. They also asked her to transfer all her money from the bank account to an account which the fraud caller gave, on the claim that the Reserve Bank of India needed to check the source of the money, after which they will return the amount to her bank. The amount that was transferred to the fraudster’s account was Rs 20 lakh.

The woman ended up transferring the money to that account. She started to become suspicious when she noticed that the money had not returned even after 3 days. She went to the police and lodged a complaint under sections 419, which is cheating by personation; and section 420 of IPC, which is cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property; and identity theft which comes under Section 66C and cheating by personation by using computer resource under Section 66D of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

A similar case from Gurugram was reported earlier in March, where a woman received a call from fraudsters, who were posing as Mumbai Police. They duped her of Rs 20 lakh as well.