In a heart-wrenching cybercrime incident, an 87-year-old retired civic doctor from Mumbai was tricked into losing a staggering ₹16.14 lakh after unknowingly calling a scam number while looking for pest control services linked to her local municipal ward.
The senior citizen, who retired from service at the civic health department in 1997, resides in a residential society along Linking Road in Khar (West). On December 20, 2024, she began a simple online search for pest control services under the H West ward of the city’s municipal body. Believing she found the right number, she dialed a contact she came across on Google.
A woman on the other end of the call answered, introducing herself as a municipal employee, and requested a small ₹50 registration fee to initiate pest control services, claiming no further payment would be required. Despite not having online mobile banking connected, the elderly woman was persuaded to continue. The caller insisted that she must register to avail the services.
What followed was digital deceit — the fraudster sent a malicious phishing link, asking her to fill out a form. The moment she clicked the link and submitted her details, her phone was compromised.
While the call was ongoing, a message popped up on her mobile, notifying her that ₹1.85 lakh had been debited from her Kotak Mahindra Bank account. When she questioned it, the fraudster casually responded that “she would return ₹1 lakh” — an obvious red flag that prompted the victim to immediately hang up.
Initially, when she visited her banks the following day, she didn’t detect any suspicious deductions. However, by January-end, upon updating her Punjab National Bank passbook, she was shocked to find over 40 unauthorized transactions between December 20, 2024, and January 22, 2025, totalling around ₹13.35 lakh. Follow-up checks at her Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank accounts confirmed additional deductions, bringing the total to ₹16.14 lakh.
She quickly reported the incident to the cybercrime helpline, stating that a woman falsely posing as a civic body employee had obtained her sensitive banking details and withdrew the money through multiple unauthorized transactions.
An FIR has been registered at the West Cyber Police Station against the unidentified fraudster. Authorities are investigating the digital trail of the phishing link and phone number used in the scam.
This unfortunate incident serves as a stark reminder of how cyber criminals exploit trust and digital naivety, even targeting our senior citizens.
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