The 31-year-old, who serves as the head of product marketing at a multinational corporation in Bengaluru, was scammed by individuals posing as FedEx and Mumbai police officials, leading to a staggering loss of ₹51.29 lakh.
Here’s a breakdown of how the scam unfolded.
On September 17, she received an automated call claiming that her Aadhaar details were linked to a narcotics trafficking operation.
Later that day, around 9:50 am, she received a call from someone claiming to be from FedEx. Following the instructions given, she spoke with a person named Ashwin Kumar from FedEx customer service. Kumar informed her that her Aadhaar information had been used to send a package containing MDMA, a banned substance, to Iran, which had been intercepted by the Mumbai police.
During a grueling 10-hour Skype call, the scammers relentlessly threatened her with arrest if she did not comply with their demands.
The impersonators, acting as law enforcement, told her that a drug-laden package had been seized and that her identity was being misused.
Subsequently, she was connected to a fraudulent cybercrime officer from Mumbai, who asserted that her Aadhaar was associated with criminal activities, the report detailed.
There was a recent update that cybercriminals are now resorting to the postal service to carry out their crimes. This is hardly the first incident and the strategy used in more than one instances involves instilling fear in mind that they appear to be connected to the criminal scene. Then, someone disguised as an officer gets in touch with the victim.
Coming back to the topic in discussion, the fraudsters persuaded her to remain on the video call and cut her off from her family, including her husband, as they fraudulently withdrew a ₹50 lakh loan from her ICICI bank account without her consent, the report stated.
Further, they siphoned off ₹1.99 lakh from her salary account and distributed the remaining loan amount to multiple other accounts. One of the con artists even posed as a high-ranking police officer, alleging that her Aadhaar details were connected to grave offenses like money laundering and arms trafficking, all without her consent.
