A 74-year-old Hindi TV actor has been allegedly duped of Rs 3.05 lakh by a fraudster pretending to be a wine shop employee.
According to Indian Express, she was duped while placing an online order for a bottle of liquor from a wine shop. The report further states that the unnamed actor had found two numbers while searching on the internet for wine shops. She ordered a bottle of whiskey through one of those and made a payment of Rs 4,800 through an e-wallet platform. When she did not receive the bottle, she called the number to check on the status of the delivery. The person who answered the call told the complainant to register online for a refund and also asked for an OTP after taking her debit card details.
After that, the accused made several transactions from her account. He then claimed there was some issue with her debit card and asked for her credit card details and the OTP for that. Once she supplied these, he made further transactions and the actor lost Rs 3.05 lakh total.
When she tried calling him back, she found the accused had switched his phone off.
The actor lodged a complaint with the Shivaji Park police station in Mumbai. The police have registered an FIR for cheating under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and IT Act, against an unknown person, Hindustan Times reported.
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Earlier, in June, a similar case had happened with veteran actor Shabana Azmi. She had taken to her Twitter account and accused an alcohol delivery platform of allegedly duping her. In her tweet, she had mentioned that despite paying the amount upfront, the ordered item was not delivered to her and her calls to the phone number went unanswered. In reply to her tweet, several Twitter users had warned her that phone numbers displayed on Google for alcohol delivery are often fake.
Previously, celebrities including Akshaye Khanna, Nargis Fakhri, and Karan Singh Grover have also fallen prey to online scams.