Constable cheated by online fraudsters of 71k | Pune News

Pune: A police constable, posted with the Koregaon Park police station, lodged a complaint against some online fraudsters for duping him of Rs 71,000 via an encrypted link on his social media handle.Senior inspector Vijayraj Doke of Koregaon Park police told TOI, “The constable was heading to a bandobast duty on Tuesday on his motorcycle. His cellphone rang and he pulled his motorcycle to the side of the road and checked his messages.”“He had received a message on his social media profile. It was an online advertisement of a channel. He clicked on the link and within few seconds, his cellphone stopped functioning. Within a few minutes, total sum of Rs 71,000 was transferred to two bank accounts in separate transactions,” Doke said.“It took some time to restart the cellphone. When he restarted it, there were no messages or emails of online money transactions from his bank account,” he said.“The next day, while carrying out an online transaction, the constable received messages indicating that money had been debited twice from his bank account. The amount was transferred directly to the suspect’s bank account from an UPI linked bank account of the constable. We suspect that the fraudsters gained control of his phone for few minutes and executed the bank transactions,” Doke said.“A preliminary investigation revealed that the money has gone to a bank account located in Madhya Pradesh,” he said.“It was a fraud link under the garb of an advertisement. We were probing how the suspects gained access to his phone and how the UPI credentials were compromised on his phone. Upon checking, we did not find any remote access software install on his phone,” he said.