A Bengaluru-based techie fell victim to an online gift card scam recently, losing Rs 4.5 lakh. As per a Money Control report, the fraud started when the engineer received a Diwali gift message on WhatsApp, allegedly from his boss. “I am currently engaged in a conference call meeting and I need you to run a quick assignment. We need to provide our clients in India with some gift cards, can you confirm if we can get apple app store cards from Paytm…,” read the WhatsApp message received on October 13.
Willing to make a good impression, the engineer, who was also a fresh recruit, purchased the vouchers that cost him Rs 4.35 lakh. Consequently, he shared the voucher codes as instructed. He realised he’d been duped when he casually mentioned the “gift request” to his HR department, only to find out it hadn’t come from his real boss at all.
Engineers files FIR with cyber crime police
The engineer, as per the report, filed an FIR at Bellandur Cyber Crime branch the next day. Police have started investigating the case, warning others to be cautious of similar scams.
The victim told the publication “Apple’s customer support operates only Monday to Friday from 9am to 6pm, which significantly limits victims’ ability to seek timely assistance. I couldn’t get the IDs blocked or get any respite immediately in recovering the misused funds and had to wait till morning for Apple support to open”.