KOCHI: A Tripunithura native has become the latest victim of cyber fraudsters as she lost around Rs 1.13 crore for claiming bogus prize money from an e-commerce platform. The Ernakulam cyber police have registered a case following a complaint from Sobha Menon.
The police said the incident happened between March 26 and September 9 this year. The victim received phone calls and messages from three different numbers and the fraudsters claimed to be representatives of the e-commerce platform Snapdeal.
“In March, the victim received the first phone call. The caller claimed to be a representative of Snapdeal and informed the victim that she had won the Snapdeal lucky draw of Rs 1.33 crore. She was told that there will be a service charge to be paid to claim the money. The caller was so convincing that the victim fell into the trap,” a police officer said.
Sobha was receiving calls from numbers -- 7501479536, 7548053372 and 9163138779 -- which are now unavailable. The accused told the victim that the service charge will be returned along with the prize money. Thus, she paid around Rs 1.13 crore on various occasions to the bank accounts of the accused. When she realised that she had been played, the victim complained with the police,” said the officer.
“Similar cases of people swindling money in the name of lucky draw have been reported from various parts of the country. Though several awareness programmes are being conducted regularly on cyber crimes, people still fall prey to such fake campaigns,” the officer said.
Fraudsters create fake account of Kochi mayor, demand money
The cyber police have registered two separate cases related to fake Facebook pages of Kochi Mayor M Anil Kumar and Director of Prosecution Girish Panju. After creating fake profiles using the display picture of their original Facebook accounts, the fraudsters sent messages to their social media friends and demanded money.