An 84-year-old South Mumbai-based businessman was allegedly duped to the tune of Rs 20 lakh by cyber fraudsters who posed as senior Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers and threatened to digitally arrest him in a money laundering case. The police said that to scare the octogenarian, the fraudsters sent him documents from the ‘CBI’ and the ‘Reserve Bank of India’, which led him to fall for the scam and transfer the money.
According to the police, the businessman, who runs a company dealing in automobile spare parts, stays in South Mumbai with his 74-year-old wife. According to his police complaint, on April 5 last year, he was at home when he received a call from an unknown number around 10.44 am. “The caller identified himself as Sunil Kumar Gautam and claimed to be from the CBI office in Delhi,” the complaint said.
The caller alleged that someone was operating an account in a private bank in Delhi using the complainant’s Aadhaar card and that transactions worth Rs 5,000 crore had been made through it. The caller then sent him a ‘CBI Consent to Terms of Confidentiality Agreement’ via WhatsApp, the businessman told the police.
The document stated that an FIR had been filed regarding the case and his account was involved in a money laundering case registered against one Sandeep Kumar. The octogenarian’s name was also mentioned, and the caller threatened him, saying it was a “national secret” and that he would be “digitally arrested”.
The businessman then had a video call with the fraudsters during which, they sent him another document, an ‘RBI order’ titled ‘Submitting Assets for Law Enforcement Inspection’. It instructed him to transfer Rs 20 lakh to a bank account mentioned in the document, the complaint states.
“He immediately went to the nearest branch and transferred the money. As he walked to the bank, the fraudsters remained on the call. Once the money was transferred, they instructed him to report to them every two hours and then disconnected the call,” a police officer said.
The businessman approached the police later in the month after he spoke to a relative, revealed his ordeal and realised that he had been cheated. A preliminary inquiry was conducted for months after which a case was registered last week under the relevant sections of cheating, forgery and impersonation under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and IT Act.
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