Senior police get conned by phone prank, lose money in Hyderabad
HYDERABAD: Policemen conned by a miscreant, can you believe it? In a strange sequence of incidents in the Rachakonda police commissionerate, a few senior officers have been duped by a prankster who lured them into depositing money in his bank accounts in return for crucial information about suspicious persons carrying huge quantities of gold and weapons. Even after several months, police are unable to catch the prankster and recover the money.
A few months ago, a senior police officer working in the Rachakonda commissionerate had received a phone call from a stranger. “Sir, I hail from Bengaluru. I am now in car driving on a highway towards Hyderabad. I have just seen a group of men putting gold in bags and dump them in a car. They have some deadly weapons.
As a responsible citizen I am sharing the information with you and I will follow them closely and pass information on their movements to you but, unfortunately, I do not have money with me. If you can deposit some money into my bank account, I shall be able to fill fuel in my car,” he told the officer.
Believing the stranger’s claim, the officer asked him to give his bank account details and deposited ` 2,000 into his account. However, the officer did not receive any call from the stranger even after a few hours and when he called up the stranger’s number, it was switched off. He realised that he was duped as the stranger switched off his mobile after the money was deposited into his bank account.
“The prankster sounded so convincing that I believed him and immediately sent a person to deposit ` 2,000. The same thing happened to a few other officers too,” another officer, who fell victim to the prank, said.
In February this year, the same miscreant called another officer and convinced him with the same false claims.
That officer too had deposited some money into the caller’s account. He then asked his higher-ups for permission to conduct ‘naka bandi’ and rigorous vehicle-checking to nab the suspects.
“The prankster called another officer and took some money. When the information was passed on to me for intercepting the suspects, I found that the mobile number and the bank account number were belonged to the same person who played a prank with me. I also alerted the higher-ups,” said the officer.
The information was shared among all officers in the commissionerate limits to caution others to be vigilant against the prankster. The caller details were identified in Karnataka and he would be nabbed soon, the officer said.
In a similar case recently, a farmer from Mahbubnagar district was arrested for duping people, claiming that his family was stuck in some forest and needed help to get out. Some innocent people, who wanted to help him, recharged his mobile phone. The trickster later transferred the amount to another mobile of his. The farmer had cheated 527 persons in this way.