mumbai

Updated: Sep 15, 2017 15:57 IST

Despite Mumbai Police’s efforts to spread awareness about vishing cases, through their Twitter handle and a video starring actor Ajay Devgan, cases continue to occur.

The latest case involved a senior citizen, who was duped of Rs1.48 lakh.

Till July, 391 cases of card fraud including vishing have been reported to the Mumbai Police, in which only 44 are detected, making the detection rate a mere 11%.

The more worrying factor is that crime cases have increased, while detection rates have decreased. In this period last year, 267 cases were registered and 43 were detected, i.e, the detection rate was 16 %.

According to the Khar police, a 69-year-old senior citizen received a phone call from a cyber fraudster posing as a bank official at 2.30pm on September 12 .

The complainant is a housewife, and lives in a building on 10th road in Khar (West). She informed the police that the fraudster told her to furnish her card details as part of Know Your Customer (KYC) procedure. He said if she fails to provide details, her card will be blocked.

The woman gave her card details as well as the One Time Password (OTP) several times. Within a small span of time, the fraudster used the OTP numbers to withdraw Rs1,48,999 from her account.

The woman then learnt from her family members that she was fooled by the fraudster. The family then approached the Khar police station to lodge an FIR under section 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for impersonation and cheating and 66C of the Information Technology Act for identity theft.