A 26-year-old woman in Mumbai who tried to sell furniture worth Rs 21,000 on an online platform ended up losing Rs 3.77 lakh after a cyber fraudster tricked her into sending the money under the pretext of making her a payment.

An FIR was registered by the Malad police station on July 5. The woman, who works as an executive assistant in a petroleum company at Fort, lives in a building under Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA).

According to the woman, her company’s chief general manager called her saying that he wanted to sell some furniture for Rs 21,000 and he met a potential customer on Quickr, an online marketplace, who showed interest in buying them. 

“The manager told the complainant that he does not use the service of Paytm for online transactions and hence asked her to collect the payment. He gave her the number of the person to be contacted. She agreed and contacted the person on July 3,” police said.

The person who turned out to be a cyber-fraudster sent her a QR code saying it was for a payment of Rs 21,000. But when the woman scanned the code and entered her four-digit pin number, the same amount got debited from her account. The man said there was an error and using the same trick made her transfer another Rs 1,60,000 in four transactions, police said.

“The fraudster then said there was some error, and said he would contact her the next day. On July 4 he rang her up for her bank details. After sharing her bank details with the man, the stranger asked her to send Rs 500 for verification. The woman sends Rs 500 and much to her relief she gets back Rs 1,000 after which she is convinced that she will get the money back,” Malad police said.

The fraudster then asked her to send Rs 94,000 saying the entire amount along with Rs 21,000 would be returned to her. The woman kept making the transactions and ended up paying Rs 3.77 lakh, police said.