Six people in Maharashtra's Thane city have been duped of Rs 5.04 lakh allegedly from persons posing as Paytm employees, an official said on Thursday. One of the complainants told the police that on December 29, he got a call from a person, who claimed to be from the Paytm team and asked him to update his KYC, police spokesperson Sukhada Narkar said.
The caller asked the complainant to download the 'Quick Support' app on his mobile phone and make a payment of Rs 10 on it for updating the KYC.
He also asked the complainant to share his Aadhaar and PAN numbers, which the victim did, Narkar said.
The complainant then got several messages over the next two days of withdrawals collectively worth Rs 1.2 lakh from his bank account in the denominations of Rs 9,999, Rs 4,999 and Rs 2,999, she said.
When the victim approached the police on Wednesday, he found five more people there with similar complaints.
According to Narkar, the six victims were allegedly duped of Rs 5.04 lakh by fraudsters using similar modus operandi.
Based on the complaints, a case was registered on Wednesday under Indian Penal Code Sections 420 (cheating) and 34 (common intention) and provisions of the Information Technology Act, the official said, adding that no arrest was made so far.
Cyber-crime rising in India
The data from the National Crime Record Bureau report released in October 22, 2019, shows that cyber-crimes in India almost doubled in 2017.
As per the NCRB report, 56 percent or 12,123 out of 21,796 cases of cyber-crime cases registered were for the motive of fraud . The cyber-crimes category, however, accounts for less than a percentage out of a total of 50 lakh cognisable crimes in India.
Karnataka had the highest cyber-crime, followed by Assam, Telangana, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, as per the NCRB report.
Maharashtra reported the highest cases of frauds related to ATM (498), online banking (345), One Time Password (OTP) (122) under section 465,468-471 of the Indian Penal Code.
-with inputs from PTI
First Published: IST