New Delhi: The lure of ‘free offers’ for products and services is often hard to resist. Even the most discerning and intelligent people fall into the trap knowing very well that they are taking a calculated risk and may end up getting cheated.
A Delhi woman fell into one trap and all for a ‘free thali’ and ended up poorer by Rs 90,000! A 40-year-old woman from southwest Delhi allegedly lost Rs 90,000 after downloading an app as asked by cyber crooks. Savita Sharma, the complainant, has lodged an FIR at the cyber police station, PTI reported.
Sharma, who works as a senior executive at a bank, told the police that one of her relatives informed her about the offer on Facebook. She visited the site on November 27, 2022, and made a call on the given number to make an enquiry about the deal. She didn’t get any response but received a callback and “the caller asked her to get the offer of Sagar Ratna (a popular restaurant chain)”, Sharma said in her FIR lodged on May 2 this year.
“The caller shared a link and asked me to download an application to avail of the offer. He also sent the user ID and password to access the app. He told me that if I want to get the offer, I will have to register on this app first,” Sharma told PTI.
She added, “I clicked on the link and the app was downloaded. Then I entered the user ID and password. The moment I did it, I lost control of my phone. It was hacked and then I received a message that Rs 40,000 was debited from my account.” Sharma said that a few seconds later she received another message that Rs 50,000 was withdrawn from her account.
“It was very surprising for me that the money went from my credit card to my Paytm account and then moved out to the fraudster’s account. I never shared any of these details with the caller,” Sharma claimed, adding that she immediately blocked her credit card.
A representative of Sagar Ratna admitted that they received many such complaints from customers, the report added.
