Mumbai: Until now, scammers had been operating from behind the scenes in order to dupe people, but in a recent case, the scammer posing as a bank official not only visited the victim’s residence, but also convinced him to hand over his credit card and then carried out fraudulent transactions.
A 35-year-old businessman fell prey to scammers who first contacted him on the pretext of getting his credit card facilities upgraded. A fraudster visited the victim’s residence to initiate the process and managed to get details of his old credit card, which was later used to carry out transactions.
According to the police, the victim hails from Jalna and is a businessman. A year ago, he received an SBI credit card in an offer. Since last fortnight, the victim had been receiving phone calls from a woman claiming to be from SBI Mumbai office. The woman told the victim that he could get his credit limit doubled and annual fee waived.
On August 17, around 10am, the victim again received a call from the same woman who told him that she would be sending a bank executive to his place. The executive would make him fill a form, after which the old card would become non-operational and a new card would be issued.
After some time an unknown woman visited the victim’s residence and told him that she was sent by the bank. She took out the form and filled the victim’s Aadhaar card and PAN card details in it. After that she took the victim’s mobile phone and after handling the phone for a while she told the victim that his old card had been closed and that the new card would be delivered by courier in two to three days. She then left with the old credit card.
The next day the victim received messages on his phone informing that Rs1 lakh had been spent using the old car. The victim contacted the bank, informed them about the fraudulent transactions and told them to block the card.
A case has been registered under sections 318 (cheating) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and sections 66C (identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act in the matter.
