Delhi: Prompted for KYC verification of bank account on WhatsApp, teacher loses all her life savings
Vishwanath’s ordeal began on March 25 when she thought she had received a message from her bank
Five days after the incident, police on Sunday said that fraudsters allegedly operated a mule account, used to facilitate financial crimes (Reuters File) A WhatsApp chat prompting for KYC (know your customer) verification, a phone conversation with a man posing as a bank customer care executive, followed by another WhatsApp message with a link to download an APK (android package kit) file — a 59-year-old woman in Delhi allegedly ended up losing all her savings, worth Rs 47 lakh, earlier this week when she fell prey to a cyber fraud as she followed a series of steps.
Renu Vishwanath, who worked as a headmistress with a private school in South Delhi till 2019, had planned to use the savings post retirement. “I know my negligence is to blame but I still can’t believe it is so easy to execute such a thing. Apart from some of my investments, everything else is gone,” Vishwanath told The Indian Express.
Five days after the incident, police on Sunday said that fraudsters allegedly operated a mule account, used to facilitate financial crimes. “No arrest has been made as of yet. An investigation is underway,” a police officer said.
A frustrated Vishwanath, on the other hand, said, “I keep calling and asking them (police) for an update… but there has been none.”
After her stint as a headmistress ended in 2019, she has been working as a ‘life skills’ coach, she said.
Vishwanath’s ordeal began on March 25 when she thought she had received a message from her bank. The display picture of the sender showed the UCO Bank, she recalled. “The sender said that my account would be suspended if I didn’t get my KYC verification. They also sent me a number for assistance,” she said.
Once she dialled the number, a polite voice on the other end greeted her. “I’ve trusted the bank for 30 years. And the way this person talked, I could not imagine anything was amiss,” she said.
What followed was a message sent via WhatsApp from another number to download an APK file on her device. “The caller had asked to fill out a form. My name and debit card details, among other details, were to be filled in that form,” she added.
After she started filling out the form around 2 pm, she was called several times by the man who she had spoken to earlier for “assistance”. The caller urged her to trust the process.
That is when the horror eventually unfolded. She saw multiple messages on her phone — her account was being emptied. The APK file was allegedly used to get critical details from her device.
“I started seeing messages on my phone of Rs 10 lakh, Rs 2 lakh… and so on, being debited from my account. But when I asked this man posing as the customer care executive, he would tell me it was the standard procedure and that my money was safe. He would then predict some transactions, and they would happen. I trusted him,” Vishwanath recounted.
But she did not get back the money.
By 5.30 pm, Rs 47 lakh had been transferred from her account in over 40 transactions. The next day, she lodged a police complaint.
“Police told me I shouldn’t have downloaded the ‘.apk’ file. But how am I supposed to know this? This is a bank I have trusted for years. And it never let me down,” she said, adding that she is hoping against hope to get the money back.
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