Vadodara’s senior IAS officer duped of Rs 95,000 in a cyber-fraud

IAS P K Gera, currently serving as the managing director of Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd, has fallen prey to a cyber-fraud where he lost Rs. 94,999 through a deceptive online transaction from his credit card.

Gera had been regularly been receiving an SMS on his mobile about completing the KYC procedure for his PayTM wallet. This SMS also stated that his PayTM services could be shut if these procedures were not completed. To complete the procedure, Gera was supposed to call on the mobile number provided in the SMS, which he did on 21^st Aug’19.

During the phone call, Gera spoke to a man talking in Hindi who took down all his KYC details and later told him to download Team Viewer Quick Support application on Gera’s mobile phone. The man asked Gera to logout of PayTM wallet and login again. In his complaint, Gera also stated that the caller later asked him if he wanted to open a PayTM savings bank account by just making a transaction of Rs. 10.

Gera, a resident of Akota, who was interested in the offer tried to make the transaction through net-banking. However, the online transaction portal only allowed him to make the transaction through debit or credit card, to which Gera made the transaction through his Citi Bank Credit Card. To his dismay, Gera received two alerts on his mobile phone that Rs. 45,000 and Rs. 49,999 were spent through his credit card.

A startled Gera tried to reverse the payment by contacting the bank’s helpline number, however that was of no help as well. Gera has filed an FIR with the police and submitted an application to the Cyber Crime department as well.    The police stated that the investigation has revealed that the transaction was made in two different banks in Uttar Pradesh and the call has also been traced to Uttar Pradesh.