Mumbai: A Dahisar resident lost over Rs five lakh to a Google Maps scam, where the fraudsters replaced the authorised number of a local wine shop with their own, and tricked her into revealing her banking credentials when she called the number.
For long a thorn in Google’s side, Google Maps scams are ridiculously easy to perpetrate as anyone can edit the contact details of any establishment on Google Maps. This is part of Google’s User Generated Content policy, which aims to enable its users to ensure accuracy of the content displayed on Maps.
As a result, fraudsters have started changing the contact numbers of establishments like banks, restaurants, wine shops, entering their own, and lakhs of rupees are lost to these scams on a daily basis.
According to the MHB Colony police, the latest incident occurred at around 9 p.m. on Tuesday, after the victim called up her local wine shop. The victim was only checking whether the shop was open, so that she could buy a bottle of whiskey to decorate a birthday cake. However, the person who answered told her that the shop was shut but the bottle would be delivered to her residence in ten minutes. He then sent her a QR Code and she paid Rs 550 as the charges.
“Soon, another person called her and said that she would have to undergo a registration process for the delivery to be made. While initially reluctant, the victim wasn’t given a choice and as she had already paid, she decided to give in. The accused sent her an e-wallet link and told her to enter ‘19051’ as the invoice number in the ‘amount’ space. The victim, although suspicious, did so, and immediately, Rs 19,051 were debited from her account,” said an officer with the MHB Colony police station.
Under the pretext of reversing the transaction, the fraudster made her pay the same amount twice, all the time claiming that there was a glitch in their system. He then said they would try a different way and gleaned her debit card number and CVV from her. Using this, the fraudster made several more transactions and by the end of it, the victim had lost a total of Rs 5.35 lakh.
The victim gathered all the relevant details from her bank and subsequently approached the police on Wednesday. The police have filed a complaint of cheating under the Indian Penal Code, along with relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.
“We are in touch with the victim’s bank and are trying to get the transactions reversed so that she can get her money back,” the officer said.
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