West Bengal: E-wallet fraudster dupes man of Rs 4.2 lakh

KOLKATA: A 47-year-old man on Tuesday claimed to have lost Rs 4.2 lakh while trying to sell his music system on a popular online marketplace. The victim, Sachidanand Pandey, a resident of North Purbachal in Garfa, claimed he was duped twice while using two different e-wallets.
"In the first week of February, an unidentified man called Pandey over phone and sought to buy the music system, for which he had put up an ad on the website.The caller put up various excuses and induced the complainant to part with a sum of Rs 3,76,210 using UPI on the first e-wallet and again Rs 42,990 using the second e-wallet and, thereby, cheating the complainant to the tune of Rs 4,19,200," an officer.
"In such cases, the fraudsters target sellers by saying that they have raised a request to seller, approval of which would result in deposit of money in seller's account. These requests are actually collect requests in UPI. In such scenarios, sellers assume they are receiving payment and approve collect request, resulting in deduction from their accounts," reads the warning on an e-wallet website.
The first organized fraud on these platforms was detected in Kolkata in 2015. In that case, a marine engineer was arrested on the charge of defrauding a youth of Rs 34,000 through a fake advertisement on an online marketplace. "These frauds are on a rise. Every month, we receive multiple complaints. Though the numbers are still a fraction compared to banking frauds, we can stop this from becoming a nuisance," the officer said.