A 64-year-old man from Mumbai’s Vikhroli area lost Rs 6.45 lakh in a KYC (know your customer) cyber fraud. The police probe indicates that the scamster managed to pull off the fraud in a very sophisticated manner and carried out 28 fraudulent transactions one after another but the account holder did not receive even a single SMS alert. The complainant, an elderly person, has an account in the Thane branch of a private bank. According to the police, Monday afternoon he received a call from a mobile number. The caller identified himself as an executive from the private bank where the complainant has his bank account. The caller told the man that his KYC details were not updated and asked for his PAN card number. Later, the caller asked him to update his PAN details and date of birth by opening the bank’s application on his mobile phone and updating the details, the FIR states. After the complainant followed his instructions, the caller told him that it is taking time to update his details as the bank’s server is slow. The caller further said that if he wished to disconnect the call, he could. In the evening, when the elderly man was in the market and was making a UPI payment, he discovered that the balance in his bank account was low. He checked his bank details and discovered that there were 28 unauthorised transactions carried out on his account, totalling Rs 6.45 lakh. Most of the transactions were worth between Rs 25,000 and Rs 24,500, said a police officer. The senior citizen approached the police station and filed a complaint. A preliminary police probe revealed that the caller had set up a fake name on Truecaller and also used the logo of the bank as the profile picture and also as the display picture on WhatsApp, the police said. The police have registered a case of cyber fraud and impersonation against the unidentified person and are in the process of obtaining the details of the beneficiaries of the fraudulent transactions.
