Rajkot: A 64-year-old retired teacher from Bhuj in Kutch was duped out of Rs 76 lakh by cybercriminals who posed as police officers from Mumbai. Girija Tenan, who lives alone, was conned into isolating herself for two days and transferring all her savings to the cybercriminals.She filed a complaint at the Border Range Cyber Crime police station against unidentified individuals. Tenan has two sons; the older one is abroad while the younger one lives in Bengaluru. According to her FIR, Tenan received a phone call from an unknown number on Wednesday. The woman caller said her phone sim card had been used for illegal activities and would be deactivated soon. She was instructed to press ‘9′ to know more, which connected her to a man who spoke Hindi and said he was an officer at Colaba police station in Mumbai. He told her that a bank account in her name was involved in a money laundering case. When she refused to travel to Mumbai as demanded, the call was disconnected. Tenan later received a group WhatsApp video call. A man in police uniform, who said he was Vijay Khanna from Colaba police station, told her that transactions worth Rs 6 crore had been made from her account. He also said that a sim card in her name had been used to contact Naresh Goyal, a key accused in the money laundering case.The callers told her that if she disconnected the call, her sim card would be deactivated. They demanded her financial details ‘for the investigation’. Frightened and confused, Tenan divulged her fixed deposit and bank account details. The scammers told her that she was officially accused in the money laundering case and would have appear before the Supreme Court. They said that considering her age, they would put her under “house arrest” and she could not leave her house without their permission. Another man, posing as the investigating officer, joined the video call and demanded money to “settle” the case. He showed her fake Supreme Court documents and directed her to liquidate her fixed deposits, transfer the funds to her savings account and then send the money to the bank accounts they provided. Over two days, Tenan transferred Rs 76 lakh in multiple transactions. Scared, she stayed on the video call even when visiting her bank to liquidate her fixed deposits.The crime came to light when her son in Bengaluru got transaction alerts from her bank. Concerned, he contacted his mother, but she refused to divulge anything. He then got a friend’s father in Bhuj to visit Tenan and realized that she had been cheated.
