Ghaziabad: After clicking on a malicious APK file sent by cyber criminals a 51-year-old man lost Rs 15 lakh.According to the complaint filed at the cyber crime police station, Vaishali resident Lakshman Singh Negi received an APK file on WhatsApp from an unknown number on Jan 14. He clicked on the file, and a few moments later, a fraudster video called Negi from the same number.“He talked to me about activating internet banking and told me that it would be activated in the next 24 hours,” Negi told police. He added that the man had put off his camera during the conversation. While he was on the call, Negi kept receiving several OTPs continuously but did not click on those messages. Subsequently, the call got disconnected. The next day, at 8.53pm, he was notified by Punjab National Bank that money had been deducted from his account.In the first transaction, the fraudsters had withdrawn iRs 5 lakh. Before he could figure it out, he received a second message at 8.56pm from the bank stating Rs 3 lakh had been debited. This was followed by two more notifications, at 9pm and 9.10pm, informing him that Rs 4 lakh and Rs 3 lakh had been withdrawn respectively in the transactions.Piyush Kumar Singh, ADCP (Cyber & crime), said an FIR was registered at the cyber crime police station against an unknown person under section (4) (cheating) of BNS and relevant sections of the IT Act.This has become a common scam where fraudsters send malicious APK files and hack the users’ phones and bank accounts.TOI had reported that on Nov 24, a 68-year-old resident from the city was cheated of Rs 5.6 lakh by fraudsters on the pretext of updating his bank account. On Nov 27, a retired govt employee lost Rs 9 lakh to fraudsters who posed as bank officials. Similarly, on Nov 16, a Noida-based 72-year-old man’s account was hacked by cyber fraudsters. All three of them had clicked on APK files sent to them on WhatsApp. Leading banks in the country have warned their customers that these links, which often claim to be KYC updates or reward points, should be avoided.
