A 39-year-old software engineer lost ₹33.3 lakh to online fraudsters who posed as police personnel from Mumbai, threatened to book him under a money laundering case, and emptied his bank account last Monday.
The victim, Dinesh Pathak, realized that he had been cheated and approached South East Cyber Crime Police with a complaint on Thursday. Based on the complaint the police are now trying to track down the accused with the help of bank account transactions. In his complaint, Mr. Dinesh said that he received a call on his mobile and the caller introduced himself as an executive of FedEx international courier company.
The caller said that there was a parcel using his Aadhar details containing his passport, synthetic drugs, and electronic gadgets. He also informed that since its illegal and amounts to money laundering, he had roped in Mumbai police .
While Mr. Dinesh was trying to reason another person who joined the conversation forced him to switch to skype and started questioning him posing as DCP from Mumbai police.
Mr. Dinesh cooperated and shared the personal details including the bank account details following which the impersonators asked him to transfer the money online to a bank account for verification. He assured him that the transferred money will be reverted to him after the completion of procedure.
The duo also threatened to book him for money laundering if he did not cooperate with the probe. The cheating came to light when the entire savings was transferred from the account, the accused went incommunicado. Repeated attempts to reach them failed.