75-year-old Panchkula resident duped of Rs 9.10 lakh by online con

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, April 6

A 75-year-old resident of Sector 25 was duped of Rs 9.10 lakh by a scammer posing as his relative.

Ram Kanwar Dalal, who retired from the post of superintendent of HSEB, Panchkula, said he had received a WhatsApp call on April 1 and the caller claimed he was his relative, Rocky, from Melbourne, Australia. The caller said he wanted to send Rs 9.10 lakh to Dalal’s bank account, which was to be further sent to his friend for his mother’s medical treatment.

The man collected his bank account details, and later shared a receipt of a transaction of Rs 9 lakh with him. He also asked him to transfer the money to his friend, while the transaction was yet to be completed.

Dalal went to the bank and transferred Rs 4 lakh into two bank accounts as per details shared with him.

The complainant then again received calls wherein the imposters kept on asking for money on one pretext or the other. He even received phone calls wherein the callers claimed that they represented the bank and that they had rung him up to ascertain the reason for huge sums of money being transferred to his bank account, which left Dalal under the impression that the original callers were not lying.

He later transferred another Rs 5.10 lakh to their accounts through RTGS.

He then contacted Rocky’s parents after he failed to receive the funds from abroad. He then ascertained that he had been duped of Rs 9.10 lakh by fraudsters.

A case under Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 120-B (party to a criminal conspiracy to commit an offence punishable with death) of the IPC has been registered at the cybercrime police station in the city. The police have started an investigation into it.

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