TOI’s Report According to Pradeep Choudhary, a doctor in Delhi, after traveling to Gurgaon, he noticed that he was overcharged by Rs 113, due to which he asked the cab driver for a refund, but the driver contacted the cab service’s customer service for the same. Advised to contact. In such a situation, Choudhary searched the company’s customer service number on the internet. However, the biggest mistake he made here was that the number he dialed was not actually the customer care number of the cab service.
When Chaudhary dialed the number, a person identified himself as a customer service representative of the same cab service and after hearing Chaudhary’s complaint, transferred the call to a person claiming to be Rakesh Mishra. Mishra instructed Chaudhary to download a remote sensing application and open his e-wallet.
Next, he instructed Chaudhary to enter the refund amount by typing it along with the first six digits of his phone number. To justify this, Mishra claimed that it was part of the verification process. Trusting the instructions, Chaudhary complied and also provided his OTP. Unfortunately, this led to four unauthorized transactions, causing a loss of Rs 4.9 lakh to the doctor.
Reports suggest that a case has been registered under section 420 of the IPC (fraudulent and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and section 66D of the IT Act. Investigators suspect that the scammers had posted a fake customer service number online, which led Chaudhary to fall into their trap while searching for the legitimate customer service number.