Thane man loses Rs 50,000 in reward points fraud

Thane, November 20

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A 63-year-old man from Maharashtra’s Thane city lost nearly Rs 50,000 after being lured into redeeming reward points in the name of a bank, police said on Monday.

The victim, who earlier worked with a business consultancy firm in Navi Mumbai, received a message on August 18 purportedly from a bank where he had an account, stating his reward points worth Rs 5,899 were expiring that day, an official from Naupada police station said.

The message also contained a link along with a customer ID which the sender wanted him to click. Since the ID given in the message was the same as his customer ID with the bank, the victim believed it to be genuine.

After clicking on the link and following the instructions, the victim received an OTP which he fed into the system and within seconds Rs 49,983 were debited from his bank account, the official said.

As he had not done any transaction of the debited amount, he rushed to the bank and got to know the money was transferred to another bank account.

The man approached the police on Saturday with a complaint based on which a case was registered against an unidentified person under relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act, the official said.

The reason for the delay in approaching the police was not mentioned in the complaint, he added.