Ahmedabad: A 58-year-old interior designer from Paldi lost Rs 7.7 lakh after cyber fraudsters allegedly posed as gas company officials and tricked him into downloading a malicious APK file on the pretext of ‘updating’ his gas bill. The victim lodged a complaint with the city cybercrime police on Friday.According to the complaint, the victim received a WhatsApp message on Sept 29 from an unknown number. The profile picture on the account carried the name of a gas company. The message warned that his gas connection would be disconnected that night as his previous month’s bill had not been updated.It asked him to contact a person claiming to be a ‘bill updating officer’.The victim told police that he had recently paid his gas bill and sent a screenshot of the payment to the person. He was then contacted through another WhatsApp number and allegedly told that his bill still needed to be updated.The accused sent him an APK file and instructed him to download it. The file contained the name of the company.The accused allegedly asked the victim whether he used netbanking. When the victim said he was not familiar with it, the accused told him to use the APK application and enter his debit card details to update the bill.The victim entered his debit card number and CVV, but a message said the transaction had failed. The accused then allegedly said he would check the transaction and call back in 5-10 minutes.Soon afterwards, the victim began receiving multiple OTPs, debit card limit alerts, and messages about money being debited from his accounts. Realising that he had been duped, he approached his bank and initiated the process of blocking his accounts.Police said transactions totalling Rs 7.7 lakh were made from one of his accounts, including Rs 5 lakh, Rs 48,985, Rs 2 lakh, and Rs 25,000.
