Woman duped of Rs 6 crore after being told parcel to Iran contained drugs

MUMBAI: The city cyber police have solved an online fraud, where fraudsters impersonated police officers, called up a health advisor, and threatened that her parcel sent to Iran was caught for containing drugs. They extorted Rs 6 crore and duped her. Police arrested a Pune resident, Vijay Ghodke (35), who played a key role in the fraud.The scam has raised concern about the increasing sophistication of cyber fraud in India, where criminals are impersonating officials from reputable organisations, including courier companies and law enforcement, to deceive innocent citizens.In June, the complainant was contacted by a person named Rahul Dev, posing as an authorised representative of a courier company. On Mar 30, 2024, Dev claimed that a parcel of drugs, for shipment to Iran, was linked to her using her Aadhaar card and her ICICI bank debit card used for courier charges. The complainant feared she was implicated in a serious crime.She contacted the courier company and filed a complaint that she had nothing to do with it. She was contacted by people posing as officers of Cyber Crime unit. Two persons claiming to be senior officials of Cyber Crime reached out via Skype. They told her to transfer a total of Rs 5.87 crore into their accounts. Realising she had been duped, the complainant contacted the Cyber Helpline number (1930). "The money was parked in the bank account of Ghodke who transferred it to his mentor's account," said senior inspector Mausami Patil.