BENGALURU: Cyber Crime Police discovered a new trend when a 65-year-old approached them on Friday, where cyber predators pretend to get into an agreement with victims and then hoodwink them into parting with their personal details. By getting access to their ATM PINs and OTPs, they withdraw large sums of money from the victims’ bank accounts.
According to the cyber police, a recent case drew their attention to this trend when a retired man Jeevan Kumar (name changed) was approached by a 35-year-old in Whitefield who claimed to be a software engineer with a reputed multinational company. The unidentified man said he wanted to rent out Jeevan’s home. Jeevan, who found the young man impressive, agreed to rent his house. The young man asked Jeevan to share a snapshot of his passbook via WhatsApp so he could pay the deposit directly to Jeevan’s account. However, he called Jeevan later and informed him that he was unable to send him the money, so it would be more convenient if he could share his ATM card details.
Believing the man, Jeevan obliged, only to realise later that the fraudster made four withdrawals amounting to `1.20 lakh from Jeevan’s account, before vanishing.“This is the first time we are seeing such a case, wherein the culprit approaches the victim directly. He is targeting the elderly. We don’t know if the culprit has done this before in other states too. As of now, we know that the money has been withdrawn from an account in Noida. We are yet to nab the culprit,” said Cyber Crime Police Inspector M Chandrappa.
With criminals getting smarter, cops say Cyber, Economic, Narcotics (CEN) cells are the need of the hour, besides spreading awareness to never to part with confidential details.
According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), S Girish, the cells are expected to come up in the city within the next two months. “We are also receiving additional systems and software to cope with the increasing number of cyber crime cases. Our staff will be receiving level-2 training at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID),” Chandrappa said.