Three duped in separate cyber fraud cases

Bhopal: Cyber criminals continue to devise new ways to target unsuspecting users, with three residents of Bhopal losing a combined Rs 8.91 lakh in separate online frauds involving alleged mobile phone hacking and phishing links.

Police have registered cases and launched investigations.In the first case, Salman Ansari, 27, a resident of Khanugaon under Koh-e-Fiza police station limits, alleged that his mobile phone started updating automatically multiple times between May 21 and May 23 without his permission. Initially dismissing it as a routine software update, he later checked his bank balance through a UPI app and discovered that Rs 2.96 lakh had been transferred from his account in three transactions.In another case, Archay Chakravarty, 34, an assistant accounts officer residing in Lalghati, reported that fraudsters siphoned off Rs 2.14 lakh from his bank and credit card accounts. According to the complaint, he noticed that several applications had been deleted from his phone and his Google account had been logged out. Upon restoring access, he found unauthorised transactions carried out using his two credit cards and a bank account.

In the third incident, Nikhil Chauhan, a resident of Harvansh Vihar in Misrod, is a farmer. He alleged that fraudsters posing as doctors cheated him of Rs 3.79 lakh. He said his father, Rajkumar Chauhan, had been searching YouTube for treatment options for kidney stones. During the search, he came across a video featuring a purported doctor and called the mobile number provided in the video on June 17.The caller asked the family to register the patient by filling out an online appointment form and sent a link for the purpose.

Since Rajkumar was unable to fill in the details himself, he shared his son Nikhil’s mobile number with the caller.Nikhil said he received the link, opened it and entered his father’s name, age and mobile number. Immediately afterwards, his phone stopped functioning normally, leading him to suspect that it had been compromised. Three days later, on June 20, he received SMS alerts from his bank regarding debit transactions.