KOCHI: A man was duped after he contacted a toll-free number for repairing a smartphone and lost money from his bank account. The Koothattukulam native approached the police after losing Rs 4.78 lakh from his bank account on May 9.
Ernakulam Rural cyber police registered a case and have initiated an investigation. According to officers, the complainant’s faced minor technical issues with the mobile phone, and he wanted the service centre authorities to sort them out. As there is only one service centre for Google Pixel phones in the country, the victim searched for the toll-free number online.
“He contacted a number -- 18004190655 -- found online. The accused, posing as a service executive, promised to return his call. Soon, he received a call from a private mobile phone number and the person introduced himself as working with the service centre,” a police officer said.
After the complainant narrated the issues, he started receiving chat messages from another number promising assistance. He received a message asking him to install an app called Rust Desk -- a screen sharing and remote access application.
“Believing that people at the service centre wanted to examine the phone to identify the problem, the victim installed the app. However, soon after installing the app, fraudsters got access to the phone of the victim. The accused managed to get access to the banking apps and diverted Rs 4.78 lakh from the victim’s account in two transactions,” the officer said.