Elderly man duped of ₹37 lakh on pretext of updating credit card address in Gurugram

An elderly man allegedly lost his entire savings after he received two messages within a gap of a few hours regarding the delivery status of his credit card, police said on Tuesday.

Police said the victim was cheated of ₹37.6 lakh, which included money in his savings account and fixed deposits. The suspects are yet to be arrested, police added.

The victim, identified as Harish Chander (76), a resident of New Gurugram, received an SMS on October 23 this year, stating that his new credit card was undelivered to his address. But within a few hours, he received another SMS saying that the card was delivered.

Investigators said Chander got worried and searched for the customer care number of the credit card issuing bank on the internet. They said that he got a number highlighted as ‘customer care’ of the concerned bank after doing a Google search.

A senior police officer said that Chander’s called the number that he found on the internet and it was received by a suspect, impersonating a customer care officer. The suspect extracted his savings bank account details in the name of updating his address and also guided him to download a remote access app on his mobile phone.

Chander said that he earlier lived in Old Gurugram and shifted to a new residence a couple of years back.

“I got worried because I thought my credit card was handed over to a wrong person,” Chander said, adding that he told the suspect about his new address and asked him to update it. In the process, he also gave his debit card and savings account details.

“The suspect, in order to win my confidence, said that the call was being recorded for security reasons and I don’t have to worry. I failed to comprehend that it was a fraudster and lost all my life’s savings,” Chander said.

Police said that an FIR was registered under sections 43A, 66 and 66D of the Information Technology (IT) Act and Section 420 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) at Cybercrime police station in Manesar on Monday.

Subhash Boken, public relation officer of Gurugram police, said investigations are underway to trace the location of the fraudster.