BENGALURU: Cyber scamsters have a brand new scheme with which to trick gullible netizens: callers offer to help with the deposit of income tax refund into taxpayers’ accounts. Preeti K, a Bengalurean, was one of the many who fell prey to this cyber scam, and also discovered, to her chagrin, that bank authorities are not willing to take responsibility though the bank accounts are active with their bank branches.
The phishing attack took place in Kolkata, after an elderly male caller pretended that he could help with the deposit of income tax refund into her account. She was tricked into making payments to his account after he generated a payment link and made away with a cool Rs 1 lakh.
Preeti, who transferred the money through Paytm, realised she had been cheated when the caller removed the money within three minutes after it was transferred to his Standard Chartered Bank and SBI accounts. Preeti then rushed to the cybercrime police and jurisdictional Haringhata police station, about 50km from Kolkata, to lodge a formal complaint. But when she went to the police, she was told that they don’t have the funds and wherewithal to investigate and solve the crime, despite having substantial information like details of bank accounts and transactions.
Preeti’s family, who spoke to TNIE from Kolkata, suspect a larger racket. They said the caller’s name was ‘Ram Singh’ and the phone number he was calling from was 09394025870, which had been given to the police.
“The money was transferred through PhonePe to his Paytm account and then to multiple accounts in Standard Chartered Bank and State Bank of India. When contacted about these ‘fraudulent criminal’ activities, they complained that neither was willing to help the victim’s family and investigations with the details. The phone numbers and bank accounts are in different names.’’