In the last week alone, there were two cases where fraudsters posed as Army officers and targeted diagnostic labs and cheated their staff members on the pretext of making an advance payment for taking bulk appointments to their subordinates.
In the first instance, posing as an Army officer, a person cheated the staff of a diagnostic lab in R.T. Nagar and escaped with ₹1.05 lakh on the pretext of making an online payment.
Tanzeen Shahjahan, from R.T. Nagar, filed a complaint with the North Division Cyber Crime station on Tuesday, stating that a person approached her seeking details of a lab test for around 25 Army men.
The accused, after a few minutes of conversation, asked her to send a small amount of money to his online account so that he would revert the total fee of all 25 officials. She transferred the amount to the account, only to realise that of₹ 1.05 lakh had been deducted.
A similar incident occurred with a doctor from Konanakunte, who complained to the South Division Cyber Crime police that a person posing as an Army officer cheated her on the pretext of seeking lab test details and made away with ₹94,900 on Sunday.
Swathi Gudage told the police that the person posing as a BSF officer from the 94th battalion asked her for the lab test fee for 25 new recruits.
As soon as she shared the details, the accused told her that he would send her a QR code to scan so that he could link the account number for transferring the fee. As soon as Dr. Gudage scanned the code, ₹94,900 was deducted from her account.
The Cyber Crime police are now trying to track down the accused through the account details.
According to a police officer, the accused would borrow the account and SIM cards from people from rural areas, promising a meagre remuneration for sharing their SIM and bank accounts. The police warned people not to scan any forwarded QR code or entertain unknown callers.
