A 24-year-old man from Maharashtra’s Palghar district lost Rs 4.5 lakh after he ran a Google search for the grievance handling helpline of a bank but ended up interacting with a fake website, as reported by an official on Wednesday.
The complainant, a resident of Nala Sopara on the outskirts of Mumbai, wanted statements of his account with a nationalised bank in connection with his admission to a UK university for a management course. He visited the bank in August but nobody apparently responded to him immediately. Upset by the experience, the complainant began looking online to lodge a complaint against the bank.
The official said the man clicked on one of the Google search results thinking it was the right portal but ended up interacting with a fake website. When the complainant called the number shown on the website, the person on the other side took all his debit card details under the pretext of resolving his grievance. The fraudsters then Rs 4.5 lakh from his bank account in two transactions, the official said.
Based on his complaint, the police on Tuesday registered a case under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code but did not elaborate on why the man approached them late.