A 37-year-old woman has fallen prey to scammers posing as Mumbai police officers, in the drugs in parcel scam and has ended up losing Rs 9 lakh. The scammers had claimed that a parcel of her destined to Iran containing MDMA drugs has been intercepted by the Customs department. They then induced the victim to take a personal loan from her banking app and transfer the amount to a beneficiary bank account in order to seek clearance from the police.
According to the police, the victim is a resident of Thane. On October 07, the victim had received a call from a person claiming to be from an International Courier Service company. The caller told the victim that a parcel in her name going from Mumbai to Iran has been caught by the Customs department and MDMA drugs has been found in the said parcel and that she may face police action. The victim was told that if the said parcel did not belong to her, she can complaint online to the police.
The caller then connects the call to a ‘police officer’ from Mumbai Cyber Crime Department. The said person then told the victim that her Aadhaar card was used in five states for serious frauds. The scammers then made the victim open her banking app and was asked to take a personal loan of Rs 9 lakh. They then forced the victim to transfer the said amount of Rs 9 lakh to the account number provided by them.
The scammers told the victim that said money will be credited to her account soon once the transaction is verified and she would get police clearance certificate within an hour. However, when later when the victim did not receive any police clearance certificate, she tried contacting the scammers, but her calls remained unanswered. Having realised that realized she had been duped, the victim approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter.
A case has been registered by the Thane police under sections 318 (cheating), 319 (cheating by personation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and sections 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act in the matter.
