Ahmedabad: A 58-year-old interior designer from Paldi lost Rs 7.7 lakh after cyber fraudsters allegedly posed as gas company officials and tricked him into downloading a malicious APK file on the pretext of ‘updating’ his gas bill. The victim lodged a complaint with the city cybercrime police on Friday.
Police said transactions totalling Rs 7.7 lakh were made from one of his accounts, including Rs 5 lakh, Rs 48,985, Rs 2 lakh, and Rs 25,000. He was then contacted through another WhatsApp number and allegedly told that his bill still needed to be updated.
The victim told police that he had recently paid his gas bill and sent a screenshot of the payment to the person.
The victim received a WhatsApp message on Sept 29 from an unknown number, according to the complaint. The accused then allegedly said he would check the transaction and call back in 5-10 minutes. The message warned that his gas connection would be disconnected that night as his previous month’s bill had not been updated.
When the victim said he was not familiar with it, the accused told him to use the APK application and enter his debit card details to update the bill. The victim entered his debit card number and CVV, but a message said the transaction had failed. The profile picture on the account carried the name of a gas company. The accused allegedly asked the victim whether he used netbanking. Soon afterwards, the victim began receiving multiple OTPs, debit card limit alerts, and messages about money being debited from his accounts. Realising that he had been duped, he approached his bank and initiated the process of blocking his accounts.