A 50-year-old woman from Colaba has lost just over €1.47 lakh after she decided to take an iPhone 12 (128 GB variant) which she got from an e-commerce site because she was one of their valued customers.
According to police, Alifya Miqadad Khambati, the wife of a businessman, was approached by a woman claiming to work with a leading e-commerce portal. As a valued customer, the woman said, she was presented with a gift.
“The woman asked her to choose between a refrigerator, a television set and an iPhone 12 [128 GB]. When the complainant expressed her interest in the iPhone, she was told to shop first €5,000 on the website. Since the cash on delivery option was not available, and also because an amount of €3,000 of that was refundable, Khambati was asked to make the payment through UPI,” a police officer said.
Later, the complainant received a telephone call from another executive who identified himself as Sanjeev Kumar. The man told her she would have to pay the 18% GST – €12,000 – to receive the phone.
“He gave her a bank account number, but the woman was later informed by the scammers that the transaction had failed. They asked her to hand over another one €12,010, which she did,” the officer said.
Khambati then received a call from a woman asking her to make another transaction and put RA24010 in the comments section to process a refund of her GST money and also told her that she would have to enter an OTP which the supervisor would send her. After the complainant followed the instructions, she lost another one €24,000.
When the complainant dialed the number to inquire about the refund, she was asked to transfer €99,000 through Paytm. The woman then received a call from the scammers telling her they were refunding her €1.47.700 in two steps.
“They then sent her a new account number and tried to scam her further via Paytm €99,830, €50.101, and €24,890. Because her account had insufficient funds, the transactions fell through,” the police officer said.
A case has been registered against unknown persons under section 420 (cheating and unfair delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (deception by personification using computer resources) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.