Lokmat News Network
Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:
The cyber crooks, posing as police tortured a woman for 10 long days claiming that her name was involved in a serious money laundering case relating to national security. By bombarding her with questions on video calls every day, the cyber criminals extorted Rs 17.31 lakh from her. A case was registered at the Satara police station on Friday after the family reassured the woman who was under stress due to this type of incident.
The victim, Meena (name changed) who is a B.Sc pass and married lives in the Beed bypass area. Her husband is a high-ranking officer in a reputed company at Waluj. On the evening of March 1, she was called by a person named Sanjit Kumar who said that he was speaking from the Trial Department’s Notification Unit. He said your Aadhaar card number was found in a cybercrime. Meena was surprised as the Aadhaar card number was correct.
For further investigation by stating the FIR number of the crime, he suggested she remain on a video call to record his statement through the Skype app. A set was set up like a police office lounge with police officers in uniform were seen on the video call. An officer in police uniform inquired her. Again a third person posing as a senior inspector bombarded her with questions on money laundering, and cyber crime.
CBI, IPS officers also came
Meena was thoroughly interrogated by the crooks as police that day, just as a criminal is interrogated in person. Finally, CBI and IPS officers were also present on the video call. For the sixth time, a female officer also threatened and interrogated her saying that an arrest warrant had been issued against her.
'National Secret'..... threat to husband's life
The female officer told Meena that all this is a 'national secret' and your husband is in danger from this. So she asked Meena to send a 'Safety Report' every three hours. She also said that if you tell anyone, the punishment would be five years imprisonment, 90 days minimum imprisonment, and a fine of 5 lakhs. As a result, the victim did not even tell her husband about this matter.
The criminals waited for seven days
The accused called her again on March 2. Asked to go to the bank and send photos of the RTGS form. They threatened to send as much money as there is in the bank account immediately. After sending money from one bank account, the cybercriminals got the same amount of money by giving the information of another bank account. By withdrawing the FD of another bank, Meena sent another Rs 2 lakh to the crooks. Later, as the call suddenly stopped, Meena took information on the internet on March 16 and realised that fake police had cheated her.
4.5 crore transactions in a single day
The then assistant police inspector (Cyber Cell) Amol Satodkar during the investigation found that all the money was transferred to the SBI bank account in Surat. From there it was diverted to 8 other accounts and then the cash was withdrawn. Interestingly, the first account had a turnover of Rs 4.5 crore in one day. The police inspector Brahma Giri of Satara police station is investigating the case.