A Marketing Executive has been scammed of almost ₹1 Lakh, after she bought a product online from a e-commerce website that deals in beauty and healthcare products in a unfortunately common Mumbai crime.
The Bandra resident made an online purchase, and was then contacted by a person, claiming that he was from the sales and marketing team of the company and that she had won an iPhone 15. He further told her that she would need to pay a coupon charge and a GST of ₹13,999.
The FIR states that the woman made two payments, and later on, the accused called her again, convinced her to give him her OTP and siphoned off around ₹75,000 from her account. The total number of transactions carried out on the woman’s account were 6.
While the ‘fake gift scam’ has been around for several years now, it is pertinent to ask how the scammer got the number of the victim. The fact that the caller claimed that he spoke from the e-commerce website’s sales and marketing department raises the question about whether there was a data breach in the company, or whether some insider was involved in this.
While some scams have earlier happened with users of coupon aggregator websites, this is a rare case of a e-commerce company’s user falling prey to such a scam. In such a case, it is unfortunate that even the banks cannot do much, as the amount was transferred in six different transactions and through at least two bank accounts, and the transfer amounts were not eye-raising.
The name of the website that the woman shopped from is available in the FIR of the Mumbai crime. The site looks pretty clean and secure, raising the question about how the scammer got a hold of the victim’s contact details.
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