Bengaluru techie loses ₹2.24 crore to cyber fraudsters posing as Customs and NCB officials

Also Read: Bengaluru cops clamp down on cybercrime using biometrics from land records, Aadhaar-enabled payments

Modus Operandi

The swindlers called the software engineer between 18 March to 27 March saying that they were from Customs Department and that an air parcel from Delhi to Malaysia in his name has been held back at Delhi Airport since it carried 16 passports, 58 bank ATM cards, and 140 gram Ecstasy drug tablets (also known as MDMA, a banned narcotic), police said.

The call was then supposedly transferred to the “Narcotics Control Bureau” where the “officer” forced him to download Skype, come online, police said, adding that later, the fraudsters told him that if he wanted to get rid of the case then he should transfer them money.

Sivakkumar told police that he paid ₹2.24 crore in eight installments through Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and Immediate Payment Service (IMPS).

The victim realised that he had been cheated only on 5 April and then approached police to lodge a complaint against the unknown fraudsters at the Bengaluru North East Cyber Crime Police Station.

Also Read: Woman lawyer on ‘video arrest’ loses ₹14.57 lakh, forced to strip for ‘forensic test’

Recent incidents

In the case of woman lawyer, the executive told her the parcel contained five passports, three credit cards, and 140 synthetic narcotics (MDMA) sent from Mumbai to Thailand in her name.

She was told since the parcel contained narcotics, it was on hold and if it had not been placed by her then she should reach out to the cybercrime team in Mumbai to register a complaint of ID theft.

The “CBI officer” informed her that there is a case of human trafficking, money laundering and identity theft, she said.

“They kept grilling me about my bank account details such as my existing balance, my annual CTC, my monthly income and my investments. I gave them all the needed information,” the victim told police.

On 4 April, she was asked to transfer ₹10,78,993 from her bank account to the account holder named Nithin Joseph, which she diligently did.

Further, they made two separate transactions of ₹2.04 lakh and ₹1.74 lakh on Amazon on 5 April.

On the pretext of conducting ‘narcotic tests’, she was forced to strip and pose on camera, the woman said in the complaint.

According to police sources, since the beginning of the month about 25 people have fallen prey to the fraudsters and lost over ₹4 crore in just the North East Cyber Crime Police Station limits. In most of the cases, a similar mode of operation was adopted, they added.

(With PTI inputs)