BENGALURU: A 59-year-old freelance accountant ended up losing Rs 2.05 lakh instead of the paying an outstanding amount of Rs 11 for electricity after an unidentified caller, masquerading as a Bescom official, threatened him of disconnecting power supply over the outstanding amount.
The accountant, Ravi Shankar Raman, a resident of Kannamangala on the Hosakote Main Road, was sent a link by the fraudster, which he was asked to click on to pay the bill online. As soon he accessed the link, Rs 2.05 lakh was transferred from his account to that of the accused.
“In fact, there was no outstanding amount as the bills of previous months were cleared on time. However, over the last three days, I kept getting messages to clear the pending bill. I made a mistake that I had called the number from where the message was sent. The conman sent a link, and asked me to download it. There was Rs 11 due. The accused took control of my mobile phone and transferred around Rs 2.05 lakh from my account to his account,” Raman told TNIE, who has filed a complaint with the Whitefield CEN police station, last week.
The accused Vinay Kumar, has swindled money from two accounts of the victim. “Many customers tried to pay the electricity bill by clicking on the link sent by the fraudsters, and have lost money. Bescom neither calls its customers or sends any message to alert them about payment of electricity bills. Despite repeated awareness campaigns by Bescom on social media, some customers have been trapped by cyber fraudsters,” stated SR Nagaraj, General Manager (Customer Relations), Bescom, in a recent complaint which Bescom had filed with the CEN police station.
BESCOM had filed a complaint seeking criminal action against online fraudsters who have conned consumers claiming to be electricity officers. Few customers who had received such messages had complained to the 1912 helpline. “Most of such messages are sent from West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh,” said an officer.