Delhi woman falls prey to ‘free thali’ bait, loses Rs 90,000 in cyber fraud

New Delhi, May 27

Lured by a ‘buy one thali (food plate), get another free’ offer, a 40-year-old woman from southwest Delhi allegedly lost Rs 90,000 after downloading an app as asked by cyber crooks.

Savita Sharma, the complainant, has lodged an FIR at cyber police station.

Sharma, who works as a senior executive at a bank, told the police that one of her relatives informed her about the offer on Facebook.

She visited the site on November 27, 2022 and made a call on the given number to make an enquiry about the deal. She didn’t get any response but received a call back and “the caller asked her to get the offer of Sagar Ratna (a popular restaurant chain)”, Sharma said in her FIR lodged on May 2 this year.

“The caller shared a link and asked me to download an application to avail the offer. He also sent the user ID and password to access the app. He told me that if I want to get the offer, I will have to register on this app first,” Sharma said.

She added, “I clicked on the link and the app was downloaded. Then I entered the user ID and password. The moment I did it, I lost control of my phone. It was hacked and then I received a message that Rs 40,000 was debited from my account.” Sharma said that a few seconds later she received another message that Rs 50,000 was withdrawn from her account.

When contacted, a representative of Sagar Ratna admitted that they received many such complaints from customers. — PTI 

Modus operandi

• The cybercriminal shared a link, asking the victim to download and register on an app to avail the offer
• As soon as the victim entered the user ID and password, she lost control over the phone
• Multiple messages were later received by her showing debit of Rs 90,000 from her bank account