Woman said she received a WhatsApp text from an unknown person—‘union bank Aadhaar update.apk’—that had her bank account and card details
According to the police, the .apk file on which the woman had clicked was some malware. Representation pic
The Byculla police has registered a first information report (FIR) against unknown persons after a 36-year-old woman from south Mumbai lost Rs 13.20 lakh to cyber fraud after clicking on a link received via WhatsApp. The alleged incident took place nearly two months ago, on July 28.
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According to the woman, the money was part of the insurance settlement she had received just two months ago, following her husband’s death.
The woman said that she had spent Rs 83 lakh on her husband’s treatment, and she only got Rs 10 lakh from the insurance company, while her savings of R3 lakh were wiped out by the alleged fraudsters.
Narrating the incident, the woman in her complaint said that on July 28, she received a WhatsApp text from an unknown person—‘union bank Aadhaar update.apk’—that had her bank account and card details.
“I opened this apk file and it had the details of my debit card, and immediately I closed the file and went to sleep. At the same time, I started getting OTPs, which I did not share with anyone and next morning I found that around R2 lakh was withdrawn from my second account,” the woman said while speaking with mid-day.
“My husband used to handle that (second) account... when the money was debited, I immediately called my brother and rushed to Byculla police station within 10 minutes; while I was at the police station, the money kept debiting from the account.”
The woman said that she and the cops also tried to call the bank to stop the transactions, however, the fraudster(s) emptied the account.
According to the police, the .apk file on which the woman had clicked was some malware. With the help of this, the cybercrooks took control of her mobile phone number and managed to transfer all her money.
The transactions show that the purchases were made on Westside, one money, Jio, and Bharatpe.com, the police said.
“Had the money been transferred to some other account, we could have saved the amount by freezing the accounts, but since the cyber criminals have made purchases, it becomes difficult to get the money back,” said a police officer.
July 28
Day alleged incident took place
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