A 63-year-old woman was allegedly duped for Rs 2.38 lakh by a cyber fraudster who sent her a text message asking her to pay her electricity bill and tricked her into revealing her bank details using a remote access application.

In the first information report (FIR) registered at the Park Site police station on May 17, the complainant told the police that she lives alone in Powai and is a lawyer by profession. On May 16, she said, she was travelling to Bandra for work when she received a text message asking her to pay her pending electricity bill. The woman said she later got a call from a person who posed as an employee of a private company supplying electricity.

The fraudster allegedly asked her to download and install the ‘AnyDesk’ application which gave him access to her mobile activities. He first told her to make a payment of Rs 11 to update her bill so that her electricity connection would not be disconnected, she told the police.

The lawyer, however, did not realize that while she made a payment of Rs 11 to the private company, the fraudster was able to see her mobile activities and copied her bank details. Soon after she made the payment, Rs 2.38 lakh was transferred from her bank account in four transactions, she told the police.

The woman received alerts from her bank informing her about the transactions after which she called her bank and blocked her bank account. She subsequently approached the police with a complaint.