A Noida-based senior citizen couple looking for a dishwasher company’s customer care number on the Internet have lost Rs 8.24 lakh to cyber thugs, officials said on Thursday.

The couple, who live in a farmhouse at Sector 133, said the fraud took place on January 22 and 23 and they lodged an FIR at the local Sector 126 police station on Wednesday.

According to complainant Amarjeet Singh, his wife Rajinder Arora had been searching for the customer care number of IFB dishwasher on Google in the afternoon of January 21.

“She found a number — 1800258821 — which showed up as IFB’s customer care. However, now the same number is showing as the customer care number for Bandhan Bank. When my wife called up this number, a woman answered and said she would connect her to a senior officer,” Singh, 70, said.

“Later, the senior officer asked my wife to download the AnyDesk app on her phone, share some details like her location and a four-digit code which was displayed on the app. He then said a fee of Rs 10 was required to be transferred from her bank account to register the complaint,” Singh said.

During the process, the phone call got disconnected multiple times but the “senior officer” kept calling Arora back from his personal number, asking her to complete the process. That phone is switched off now, Singh said.

“By around 4.15pm, we got a message on the phone from our bank, informing us that Rs 2.25 lakh have been debited from our joint bank account.... The next morning, we saw another text message informing us of a debit of Rs 5.99 lakh from the account,” Singh alleged.

The complainant said that after the first fraudulent transaction, he had informed the manager of his bank and had been assured that the joint account had been frozen. However, despite that, more money got illegally withdrawn from it. Singh said he had also reported the incident to the national cyber crime reporting portal, cybercrime.gov.in, on January 22.

“We are senior citizens, we rely on our savings and the interest on the fixed deposits in the bank,” Singh stated in his police complaint.

The police said they had lodged the FIR and started an investigation.

“The FIR has been lodged under Indian Penal Code Section 420 (cheating) and provisions of the Information Technology Act. The case has been referred to the IT cell for further investigation and action,” Sector 126 police station in-charge Satyendra Kumar said. The police urged citizens to report any cyber offence immediately to the national helpline number 1930 or to 112. Noida and Greater Noida residents can also use the local police’s dedicated helpline number 0121-4846100 to report any cyber offence.