KUMUD JENAMANI
Jamshedpur, Nov 5: A retired Army man and a state government employee were duped of over Rs three lakhs by cyber criminals in and around steel city, leading the victims to lodge FIRs with the Bistupur-based Cyber thana on Saturday.
Sitting cosy away in an unidentified city, the cyber criminals succeeded to siphon off the hard-earned money of the victims on the pretext of providing online services pertaining to Jeevan Praman Patra (JPP) and increasing the credit card limit.
In one of the cases, Sandeep Kumar who is a resident of Lalpur in Musaboni and retired from the Indian Army in 2018 did not get his pension amount in October.
Having searched through Google, Sandeep called the Allahabad-based Principal Controller of Defense Account, but the phone was found busy. A few minutes later, the victim got a call, informing him that as he had not submitted his JPP, he did not get the October month’s pension.
Eventually, the caller asked Sandeep to download an App and sent a link, informing him that he has to fill up an online form to be submitted to that App. As soon as the victim followed the instructions, he got an SMS on his cellphone, informing Rs 2.04 lakhs was debited from his account.
In another case, Dhananjay Kumar who is an employee of the Subernarekha Multi-purpose Project office in Mango got a call from the SBI Credit Card office. The caller who was a lady informed Dhananjay that he may get his credit limit increased to Rs three lakh but the credit balance has to be brought to zero for obtaining this benefit.
According to the FIR, Dhananjay who is a resident of Adityapur followed the instruction before getting another call the same afternoon.
In the second call, the caller the credit card limit will be increased in 24 hours, but two OTPs that would come on the cellphone had to be conveyed as they come. As the victim who is a resident of Adityapur was trusting the caller fully, here sent the two OTPs immediately as they came. But soon after the OTPs were sent the victim got an SMS about the debit of Rs 1.25 lakhs from his account.
After being duped, both Sandeep Kumar and Dhananjay Kumar today approached Cyber thana today.
Inspector, Birendra Mandal of the Cyber thana confirmed both complaints adding that they are trying to detect the cases successfully.
