A senior citizen in south Kolkata was allegedly duped of over Rs 1.7 lakh by cybercriminals posing as officials of the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC).
The incident took place on Monday when the victim received a call from an unknown number. The caller claimed that a Rs 560 electricity bill had not been updated in the system and asked him to take immediate action to avoid a disruption in service.
The fraudster then sent an Android Package (APK) file to the victim through WhatsApp and instructed him to install it and grant the application the requested permissions. The scammer also allegedly directed the family to transfer money to a linked bank account and asked the victim’s daughter to install the same application on her phone.
According to the complaint, the malicious application established a VPN connection that allowed the fraudsters to gain remote access to both devices. The phones reportedly became unresponsive for around 20 minutes.
After regaining access to her phone, the victim’s daughter received bank alerts showing that Rs 1.7 lakh had been debited from her Punjab National Bank account through two transactions within a span of about 10 minutes.
The family subsequently reported the incident through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. The Cyber Crime wing of the CID registered a Zero FIR, which was later transferred to Survey Park Police Station for further investigation.
Police have registered a case involving allegations of criminal conspiracy, cheating by impersonation and digital fraud.
