Online Scamsters Swindle Rs 32 Lakh from a 38-year-old Bajpe Woman
Mangaluru: Even in spite of recent online scam where quite a few people have been cheated in lakhs, but still people are careless and are falling prey for these scamsters and losing their hard earned in minutes. Here is a recent incident, where a Woman from Bajpe in the outskirts of Mangaluru responded to anonymous email which informed her of some fake news that she was going to win big cash from a reputed cell-phone maker- her trust on this email resulted in losing nearly Rs 32 lakh of her hard earned money.
According to Bajpe police, the 38-year-old woman a resident of Bajpe had received an email on June 2017, which stated she had won 4,85,000 US Dollars (which is nearly 3 crore in Indian money) as third prize in a contest from phone maker whose headquarters situated in California-USA. Believing this good news, she replied and in response scamsters requested her to pay the customs duty for the award she had won. This continued for a while, where a group of scamsters repeatedly sent her Emails requesting her deposit money for various procedures like customs, anti-terrorist certificate and other documentation.
Without realizing that she was getting cheated, the woman kept on remitting money, that too by taking loans. After a while when she didn’t receive any gift money, she got suspicious and immediately reported the incident to the cyber crime police station, thereby registering a case. As per the police, the woman has no clue about whom she has deposited and other details.
Police have expressed concern over repeated cases of people being fallen prey for such scamsters despite awareness. In a similar modus operandi, recently in June, a resident from Madyar near Kotekar had lost about Rs 21 lakhs.
Really sad news. That’s a lot of money. Our govt needs to engage in some kind of public awareness program to educate people on these scams. As the digital banking expands, these scam artists will get more and more aggressive.