
Online fraud has been increasing as technology has taken a boom. There have always been updates from various sources alerting us to be safe. In a recent fraud according to TOI, On October 14, S R Sonali aged 22 a finance management graduate received a call regarding her job profile.
The caller claimed that she was calling on behalf of the job portal. The woman caller threatened R Sonali to ban her profile for seven years if R Sonali doesn’t pay a penalty for an interview call that she received from an international firm recently.
Wadala Truck Terminal police said, “Sonali’s friend alerted her that she was duped. Her friend received a pop-up on his gadget, alerting him it was a fraudulent link while trying to transfer the money.”
“He told her to disconnect the call. Cyber police sought details from the bank to track the accused in whose account the money was credited,” said a police officer.
“This led the victim to tell her friend to do the balance transfer and ended up learning she was duped. The team is probing if the fraudster was hand-in-glove with the job portal as they knew Sonali had registered her profile,” said a police officer.
Sonali said, “The woman gave an alternate way to avoid getting banned and asked for the money. She made me talk with another person who shared a link on WhatsApp.”
“But I transferred Rs 4,000 due to a transfer limit. The person then wanted the money transferred to a private bank account. I transferred Rs 2,000. Finally, he told me to transfer the money in three parts”, Sonali added.
Sonali realized that she was cheated when her friend was alerted to pay Rs 24000 through a QR code link she had forwarded on October 14.
However, after transferring Rs 56,181, the fraudster told Sonali they had an offer, if she transfers another Rs 24,000, they will minus Rs 100 as a penalty, and the balance of Rs 79,900 will be credited back to her.