A 27-year-old woman staying in the national capital region’s Gurugram was cheated of Rs 20 lakh by conmen posing as Mumbai police officers, according to the local police.
The victim got a call on March 3 from a fraudster, claiming to be working for a courier company, who said that a parcel for her had been confiscated because it contained illegal goods. He then told her that the call was being transferred to the Mumbai Police.
After a few minutes she received a call from another number, two persons spoke to her claiming to be “Deputy Commissioner of Police Balsing Rajput” and “Inspector Ajay Bansal” from the Mumbai Police’s cyber crime unit.
The duo claimed that the victim’s Aadhaar had been used in multiple criminal transactions and money laundering cases from her three additional bank accounts in Mumbai. When she told them that she did not have a bank account in Mumbai, they asked her to make a transaction to validate her accounts and they would remove her name from the records if she was found to be innocent.
She was asked to transfer money in three transactions as part of a “secret code to start a financial investigation,” to clear her name and eventually ended up transferring Rs 20.4 lakh to the conmen.
The Gurugram Cyber Crime police unit has registered an FIR based on her complaint against unknown persons under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and provisions of the IT Act.