Hyderabad:A woman seeking funds for her sister's treatment for a very rare disease reached out to Nara Lokesh on X (Twitter). She soon received a call from someone claiming to be from the Telugu Desam’s NRI group and hoped her troubles would be solved soon.
The call, however, turned out to be a cyberscam and she was conned of Rs 1.7 lakh. The victim, 22-year-old woman Ponnapu Harshitha, approached the Rachakonda cybercrime police, who registered a case and started investigation.
Harshitha, working in Hyderabad, is the sole bread-earner for her family, caring for her mother and her sister who is affected by the Budd-Chiari syndrome in which veins that carry away blood from the liver are blocked by clots.
Harshitha explained that she had shared her contact and bank details in her tweet for help. “I got a call from someone claiming to be with an NRI TDP group offering Rs 10 lakh. The next day, I received another call from a bank manager questioning about the transaction and asked me to pay remittance charges. Suspecting something fishy, I stopped responding.”
The fake bank manager sent a form online saying the money was returned because I didn’t pay the remittance charges. “Believing that it was real, I asked the NRI to resend the money, while the fake manager kept sending forms for the charges. This happened five to six times and the NRI then told me that others were interested in helping and sent fake screenshots that the amount had been deposited. On the other hand, the fake branch manager kept sending the remittance forms for the charges,” said Harshitha.
Hoping that she could access the donation, Harshitha paid Rs 1.76 lakh in a span of 15 days.
Harshitha explained that she was busy with work and her sister’s treatment in the hospital, so could not check if any money was deposited.
She added, “I realized something was wrong when I noticed the bank address was Tirupati instead of Jaggayapeta. When I went to the bank, they said there was no such manager and that they stopped accepting NRI funds a long time ago.”
