MUMBAI: A 41-year-old lawyer who had ordered a home appliance on an e-commerce portal was duped of Rs 1.57 lakh by a cyberfraudster posing as a deliveryman from the e-commerce company. Malwani police have registered an FIR under the IPC and Information Technology Act and are looking for the fraudster.
The lawyer resides with her family at Malwani. On July 2, she had placed an order on the portal for a washing machine to be delivered at her home town in Shrivardhan, Raigad. She wanted the machine to be delivered before July 12 and was frequently following up with the company to make haste with the delivery.
On July 8, at around 11am, when the advocate was at home she received a phone call.
The caller introduced himself as Manish Kumar and said he was a delivery boy with the e-commerce portal that she had ordered from. He told her that her address was not updated with the portal which would cause a problem with the product delivery. The lawyer believed him.
He then instructed her to make a payment of Rs 3 as processing fees for updating her address. A link was sent to her for making the payment. After filling up details in the link and making the payment, the lawyer got busy with housework.
Later in the day, she checked her phone and noticed text messages from her bank about debit transactions from her account. Soon texts came from two other banks-- one of them in Shrivardhan-- where she held savings bank accounts. In six transactions, she lost Rs 1.57 lakh from three bank accounts. The lawyer tried to contact the delivery boy, hoping that there was a technical error and the money would be refunded. She eventually approached the Malwani police station on August 5 and registered a complaint of cheating.
