The Mumbai police helped two individuals in suburban Santacruz get back Rs eight lakh that they lost to cyber fraudsters, who duped them under the pretext of hotel booking and bank KYC update, an official said on Thursday. These two victims had lost their money in separate cases. As they approached the police within the "golden hours" or the first few hours of the occurrence of the cyber crime, the police could recover their amount, he said. In the first case, Himanshu Desai (52) lost Rs 7,14,000 on February 25 after he got a message that the money has been debited from his bank account for hotel booking purpose. He immediately approached the Santacruz police and informed them about the fraud.
"Swinging into action, police formed a team and contacted the victim's bank and as well as the hotel booking portal concerned. They requested them to stop the transaction payment from Desai account as it was a case of cyber fraud. Bank officials immediately stopped the payment and he got back his Rs 7,05,600 into his account on Wednesday," the official said. In the second case, victim Yogesh Kaazi visited his bank in Santacruz as he was facing some problem during online transactions. After the issue was resolved and when he was stepping out of the bank, he got a message that his KYC (know your customer) information was not updated. The message also asked him to share the one-time password (OTP) after filling a form, the official said.
As he followed the instructions, he immediately received a message that Rs 99,993 had been debited from his account. Soon after that, he also approached the police, who contacted the officials of his bank and helped him recover his entire amount on Thursday, he said. "Both the victims got back their money in golden hours. We have launched an operation to identify and trace the accused," senior inspector Rajendra Kane of Santacruz police station said.
