An 83-year-old man who visits the bank for all transactions was duped out of Rs 2.5 lakh after he received a call from a man who said he was calling from “table number 3” of the branch where the victim has his pension account.
The caller had said he was calling to verify the KYC (know your customer) of the octogenarian, S.P. Sinha. The aged man failed to follow the caller’s instructions to “update his KYC online” and handed the phone to his 11-year-old grandson so he could take instructions from the caller and “update the KYC”. After the call ended, the old man was poorer by a few lakhs of rupees.
Sinha, a resident of Thakurpukur and retired government official, said that for all banking transactions he visits the branch where he has a pension account.
“On November 11 (the day before Diwali), I received a call in the afternoon. The man said he was calling from the bank (the branch where Sinha has his pension account). He also mentioned my account number. When I said the bank was closed that day, he said only the ‘verification’ section was open and that I needed to update my KYC,” Sinha told Metro on Tuesday.
“When I still hesitated, he said he was calling from table number 3 of the branch. That made me believe that the caller was a bank official because the branch where I have an account has a table number 3. Believing the man, I started following his instructions. But I soon realised that I was unable to do what the caller was asking me to and gave the phone to my grandson thinking that he would be able to follow the instructions better than me,” Sinha said.
Some time later, Sinha realised that Rs 2,57,650 had been debited from his account in two instalments. He said he had also lost access to his fixed deposits and recurring deposits.
There are many elderly Calcuttans who are not familiar with the online banking methodology and often depend on others for their banking transactions.
In this case, Sinha depended on his 11-year-old grandson, a Class V student. The boy, unaware of the fraudulent nature of the call, gave away what the fraudsters asked for, the police suspect.
Sinha said he tried to call back the number several times but found it “unreachable”.
“An investigation has been started. Such fraudulent calls are made through the internet so that they can’t be traced,” said an officer of the cyber cell in Calcutta police.
Police officers said the transactions are traced back through the money trail.
Sinha said on Tuesday evening that he was yet to hear anything about the recovery of the money.