A man was arrested from Deogarh in Jharkhand on Friday for allegedly creating a fake travel website and duping a Kolkatan on the pretext of booking a flight ticket.
Police said the complainant, who is from Russel Street in the central business district, had reported a loss of Rs 5.98 lakh while trying to book an airline ticket through an online travel portal last December.
A team of officers of the Kolkata police went to Deogarh and raided the home of Maksud Ansari at Bagdabra in Deoghar of Jharkhand and arrested him early on Friday. The cops have seized two mobile phones and two SIM cards from him.
“The victim had dialled a number he had found on a random ‘travel website’ on the Internet. Ansari allegedly answered the call and posed as an official of an online travel portal and convinced the accused to download an app on his mobile phone. Once the app was downloaded, the fraudster got remote access to the complainant’s phone and transferred Rs 5.98 lakh from the victim’s bank account to other accounts,” said an officer of the cyber crime section where the complaint was lodged.
Out of the swindled amount, around Rs 4 lakh was transferred to an account in Bangalore.
“The Internet Protocol address of the device that was used for the transfer of the fund was traced to Deogarh,” said the officer.
Through electronic tracking, the police said they located the place where Ansari was hiding.
Ansari was brought to Kolkata later on Friday and produced before a city court that sent him to police custody.
A senior police officer said people willing to book flight tickets or make hotel bookings should visit the official websites and refrain from dialling phone numbers posted on the web at random.
“The search engines can be manipulated and fraudsters often use this to their advantage. They upload fraudulent websites and phone numbers on the Internet such that people looking for travel agencies or hotel booking sites will get to see those fraudulent websites and phone numbers before the original ones,” said the officer.