Mumbai: A 68-year-old businessman was duped of ₹75,000 by cyber frauds in an attempt to get a refund of ₹11,000 that he had paid in advance for booking a flat in Panvel.
According to the DB Marg police station, the complainant, Dinesh Chheda (68) is a Khetwadi resident and distributor of biscuits.
“Chheda booked a flat in a township project of a renowned builder in Panvel by paying ₹11,000. Later, he cancelled the booking after reading several online complaints about the project, and sought a refund of the booking amount,” said a police officer.
Upon learning that several persons who booked flats in the project had filed consumer complaints, he too decided to file a complaint on a website. Soon after this, he received a call from a person claiming to be from the builder’s office and wanted to initiate the refund online.
The person sent a link to Chheda, asking him to click on it and fill in the details and transfer an amount of ₹10 to prove a transaction.
Police said that link was of TeamViewer application, which is a remote access, remote control and remote support solution that works with all desktop and mobiles platforms. As he clicked on the link, the frauds got complete access to his mobile phone without him realising it.
The complainant later started getting messages about debits from his bank account and after he checked, in multiple transactions, ₹74,115 was debited from his account, after which he approached the police to lodge a complaint.
The police said they have written to the complainant’s bank to get details of the bank accounts to which the funds were transferred. “We will initially try to freeze the bank accounts to recover as much as possible and then start the search for the accused who operate mostly from outside the state,” said the police officer.