Cyber criminals target octogenarian, swindle Rs.10 lakh

CHENNAI: An 80-year-old retired Central Bureau of Direct Taxes official was allegedly conned by a phishing caller and relieved of Rs.10 lakh from his bank account a few days ago after the victim responded to a phishing -embedded message at Kilpauk, police said. A police team that worked on his complaint managed to block the transaction for around Rs.7 lakh and retrieved the sum.

Police said the retired central government official was lured to click on the instruction received on his mobile phone which stated that his phone connection will be snapped in 24 hours if he fails to respond.

According to them, the money taken from him was found transferred to bank accounts in Tiruvannamalai, Surat and Kolkata etc. The police are now hunting for the cyber criminals involved in the incident. This is the second incident in the past three days in which the cops returned stolen money to the rightful owners.

In another recent incident, Chennai police helped retrieve Rs 8.8 lakh siphoned off by scamsters from the bank account of a 52-year-old woman of Mogappair. The scamsters had conned the woman into downloading an app after making her believe that her electricity bill is pending and they would smoother out the process online. Within minutes of downloading the app - Team viewer (a remote access computer software), the cybercriminals took her passwords and siphoned off Rs 8.8 lakh from her bank accounts in installments.