78-year-old man loses over Rs 4 lakh in fake IRCTC ticket scam
A 78-year-old from Kozhikode Vandipetta, lost Rs 4 lakhs when attempting to cancel his train ticket through the IRCTC website due to a scam.
In a distressing incident, a 78-year-old man from Kerala fell victim to a cunning online scam, losing Rs 4 lakh. The whole ordeal began innocently when he tried to cancel a train ticket on the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website. Unfortunately, he ended up on a fake website that looked exactly like the real one, created by cybercriminals to deceive unsuspecting users.
The elderly man, M. Mohammed Bashir, lives in Kozhikode Vandipetta. He needed to cancel some train tickets due to a change in his travel plans. He received a call from someone pretending to be a railway official. The imposter was skilled in both English and Hindi and managed to persuade Bashir to download a mobile app called ‘Rest Desk’.
This ‘Rest Desk’ app turned out to be a trap. It gave the fraudsters complete access to Bashir’s smartphone. He soon realised that a significant amount of money had been withdrawn from his savings account. He rushed to his bank, only to find that Rs 4 lakh from his fixed deposit was gone.
The scammers were quite clever. They called Bashir multiple times from different phone numbers. When he tried to alert the bank after the first withdrawal, they blocked him. To protect his data, Bashir reset his phone and reported the incident to both the bank and the police’s cyber cell.
The investigation revealed that the scammers took advantage of the ‘Rest Desk’ app to access Bashir’s phone. They managed to withdraw the money in four transactions, totaling Rs 4,05,919, from Kolkata. Authorities suspect the scammers have connections to individuals in Bengal and Bihar.
IRCTC had already warned users about such scams, where fraudsters create fake versions of the official IRCTC Rail Connect app. They distribute these fake apps through popular messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram. These apps may look like the real thing, but they lack essential security features, and using them can lead to the theft of personal and financial information.
Ms Kalinga