Bengaluru: Online fraudsters dupe techie, 11 victims so far

Bengaluru: When a 37-year-old IT professional became a victim of online fraud and went to file a police complaint, little did she expect that many similar cases were already registered at the station.

When Ruchitha (name changed) approached JC Nagar police station on Wednesday, she realised that the station in-charge was well aware of the modus operandi of the cyber criminals and narrated the chain of sequence even before she could explain.

Hers was the eleventh complainant registered in a span of just one week. A resident of Benson Town, Ruchitha believed that it was an inside job. They managed to retrieve all her account details and laid the trap and duped her of Rs 4,760.    

The fraud took place on Wednesday noon while Ruchitha was at work. She told DC, “I received a call from a HDFC bank representative who said the rewards point on my old HDFC credit card have expired and the same will be transferred to my new account. Since my new HDFC credit card has not been activated yet the reward points may go waste. Hence the representative asked me if I have any other account and I provided them with the details of my HDFC debit card.”

She further said, “Once I shared the OTP number along with the card details, expiry date and CVV numbers with the representative, who was online, immediately

Rs 4,760 was debited from my account and credited to - ‘Airtel wallet’. I grew suspicious and immediately called the bank asking them to block my card. The representative who had initiated another transaction of Rs 2,500 failed to debit as the card got blocked.”

When Ruchitha tried getting in touch with the representatives, who allegedly claimed to be calling from HDFC bank, there was no response. She immediately approached the jurisdictional police station to register a complaint. But she was shocked to learn that the police had their hands full and was dealing with over a dozen of similar cases in just one week.

A police officer told this newspaper, “We have received over nine to 11 cases in this connection. We suspect a gang behind credit card fraud who are targeting gullible people and on the name of bank doing online transactions.” J.C. Nagar police have over 11 cases registered in their police station and are probing in this connection.

IT city tops in cyber crimes
As per the recently released statistics by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), Bengaluru has registered 1,041 highest number of cases under the IT Act and none of the metro cities are even close to it. Jaipur is the distant second with 459 cases.