Pune: 70-year-old man duped of Rs 4.81 lakh in pension card fraud
Pune, Oct 19 (IANS) A 70-year-old man was cheated of Rs 4.81 lakh by cyber fraudsters on the pretext of pension card registration in the Baner area in Pune, Maharashtra.
The victim, Dilip Eknath Waikar, a resident of Pashan, received a WhatsApp message regarding pension card registration between September 8 and 9. He was asked to open the message and enter his bank account details. Subsequently, he discovered that Rs 4.81 lakh had been fraudulently withdrawn from his account.
Following the incident, a case was registered at Baner police station under Sections 318(4) and 318(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Section 66(D) of the Information Technology Act. The identity of the accused remains unknown, and no arrests have been made so far.
In a similar incident reported in September, a 72-year-old retired bank employee was cheated of Rs 5 lakh after clicking on a Facebook advertisement offering a pension card. The victim, a resident of Makarba, approached the Sarkhej police after noticing an unauthorised transaction in his bank account.
According to his complaint, the retired banker came across an advertisement on Facebook on September 6 offering a pension card purportedly issued by a bank. Believing the advertisement to be genuine, he applied for the card through the link provided.
The following day, he received a call from an unknown mobile number. The caller allegedly informed him that his pension card had been approved and asked him to provide his name, address and other personal details to complete the registration process.
The victim told police that he shared the requested information, including his bank account details, with the caller.
He subsequently received an email alert regarding an online transaction worth Rs 5 lakh from his account. Realising that he had not authorised the transaction, he suspected fraud and immediately contacted the cybercrime helpline at 1930.
Upon checking his bank account, he discovered that the money had been transferred online to an account maintained with Punjab National Bank.
–IANS
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