KOCHI: A North Paravoor resident who was checking the refund status of a train ticket cancellation has ended up losing Rs 1.39 lakh after falling prey to cyber fraudsters. The North Paravoor police, which registered a case into the incident, suspect the victim was lured to a fake IRCTC website created by the conmen.
Last week, the victim had cancelled a train ticket and was awaiting a refund. To check the refund status, he searched for the IRCTC customer care number on Google and ended up visiting a bogus IRCTC website, a police officer said.
“He contacted the customer care number given on the website. The person who attended the call promised to initiate the ticket cancellation refund procedure soon,” the officer said.
Later, the complainant received a call claiming to be from an executive of IRCTC. The caller promised to help him in expediting the refund. Soon the victim received two links from a WhatsApp number. The links were ticketcancellation.apk and ticketcancellation1.apk. These APK apps are not available on the Google Play Store or IOS App Store.
“Without realising that these were phishing apps, the victim clicked the links and installed them on his mobile phone. After installing these apps, the fraudsters could access entire content in the victim’s mobile phone including OTPs related to bank transfers,” the police officer said.
On November 6, the fraudsters managed to carry out 14 bank transfers from the account of the victim using the phishing apps. Realizing he had lost Rs 1.39 lakh, the victim approached the police on November 10. The police registered a cheating case and launched a probe.
“The accounts to which the money was transferred are being tracked. Attempts are being made to freeze those accounts to mitigate the money lost and recover the amount. The details of the phone number from which the victim received the links to the apps are also being checked,” he said.
“In most cases, those who dial the numbers that appear first on Google search are being targeted. People should ensure that they take customer care numbers from authentic websites,” the officer said.