Highlights
- According to the FIR filed by the police, the lady Googled "wine shops near me"
- The fraudster called the victim and informed her that cash on delivery is not an option to pay
- The person gave her a QR code to scan and soon she lost around Rs 4.80 lakh
A woman in Mumbai got duped for Rs 4.8 lakhs while she was ordering a bottle of wine online. The 32-year-old woman lives with her husband and decided to order the wine when her sister visited them at their house on April 4. According to the FIR filed by the police, the lady Googled "wine shops near me" and saw Om Sai beer shop in Powai in the results. The fraudster called the victim and informed her that cash on delivery is not an option to pay. She made a payment of Rs 650 through Google Pay and later got a call from the fraudster saying that she had paid Rs 650 instead of Rs 620, that is, Rs 30 extra, through the payment app. The person gave her a QR code to scan and get back the extra amount she paid but soon after scanning Rs 19,991 got debited from her account.
The person told her that she would get the money back and sent her another QR code. At this time, an amount of Rs 96,108 got debited from her account. The pattern went on happening until the woman lost around Rs 4.80 lakh in this manner, said the police.
Further, the police said that despite several warnings to prefer COD, people still share bank details and make online payments without any verification. A similar scenario took place with the woman who scanned the QR code at least six times before realising that she had been duped.
Well, this isn't the first time that incident of this sort has taken place. Last year in October, another online-purchase related horror happened when a 31-year-old Mumbai doctor tried booking a birthday cake for Rs 400 but lost Rs 53,000 to a fraudster. The doctor who works at a multi-speciality hospital in Gurgaon looked for the bakery over Google and dialled the fraudster's number.
The doctor got tricked when the person asked to make a payment of Rs 400 and later Rs 20 to receive a receipt and another Rs 15,236 for registration which he claimed will be soon refunded.
After that, the swindler claimed that an error has occurred and then duped the doctor for another Rs 38,472 following which he asked for a payment of a whopping Rs 50,000.