Bhubaneswar: The denizens of Capital city have been losing their hard-earned money to the cybercriminals almost every day even as the cops dealing with such cases have turned mute spectators. The cyber crooks have looted around Rs 3.50 lakh here in three separate incidents during the last seven days. One victim even alleged his bank staffers’ involvement in the fraud as well.
According to sources, three different complaints have been lodged with Kharavela Nagar, Chandrasekharpur and Khandagiri police regarding the cyber frauds of Rs 3.50 lakh.
Santosh Kumar Patnaik of Sailashree Vihar lodged a complaint with Chandrasekharpur police alleging that unknown miscreants duped him of Rs 2 lakh on the pretext of some medical emergencies. Patnaik received a WhatsApp call reportedly from South Africa with a profile picture of his brother-in-law August 29. During the conversation, the person at the other end asked Patnaik to deposit Rs 2 lakh in the bank account of one of his friends in Manipur who was suffering from some ailment.
Subsequently, he deposited the amount in the SBI account of one Tharmi Zimik.
The fraudsters again called him back and requested to deposit more money in another account. Patnaik immediately switched off the phone smelling a rat. Later, he dialled another contact number of his brother-in-law and came to know that the previous call was a fake one.
Similarly, one Ashok Kumar Sethi alleged that he lost Rs 79,000 when he downloaded a software application from the Google play store Wednesday. Sethi mentioned in his complaint that he contacted the customer care number of Google Pay after he failed to recharge Rs 99 on his mobile number. The customer care executive asked him to download the app and submit his account details on the downloaded app to ensure a successful recharge.
Later, he received a message saying the withdrawal of Rs 79,000 from his account.
In another incident, recently the cybercriminals withdrew Rs 72,000 from the account of another victim without his knowledge. Nihar Ranjan Behera of Aiginia under Khandagiri police limits alleged that the cybercriminals withdrew the amount in instalments through a different phone number – 7536961903 – that was attached to his bank account without his knowledge. He claimed that some bank officials in collision with the cyber fraudsters had attached the phone number to his account without informing him.
The lackadaisical attitude of police officials dealing with cybercrime is said to be responsible for a surfeit in such cases.