Traffic fine link fraud: Bengaluru techie loses ₹1.1 lakh from credit card

After the malicious APK file scam, incidents of fraudsters sharing dubious links with random people under the pretext of traffic fine payments to siphon money from their bank accounts are on the rise. The Whitefield police in Bengaluru registered two such cases on January 4.

A 27-year-old software engineer Anurag Kumar Pandey has complained of receiving a link from a random number on his mobile asking him to pay a traffic fine. Assuming that the link was from the traffic police, he clicked the link to check and realised later that a sum of ₹1,16,738 has been deducted from his credit card. In his complaint, Anurag said that though he had received an OTP for the transaction, he did not share it with anyone. Despite that, the transaction was completed and money was debited from his account.

In a similar case, Tarani Kumar Sharma, 38, a private firm employee complained of losing ₹1,61,270 from her credit card belonging to the same bank as the first case.

The Whitefield police have registered both the cases, and efforts are on to track down the accused based on the transaction details.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Bengaluru, Karthik Reddy advised people not to click on random links. The traffic police do not send notices or demand payments from individuals via their phones, he clarified.