Girl, 13, outsmarts cyber fraud

A 13-year-old alert teenager from Nalasopara was able to outsmart cyber frauds who tried to defraud her by sending fake money transfer alert messages to her mother’s phone on Tuesday. Although the fraud was unable to get even a rupee from the girl, the Virar police have registered a case against the unknown fraud for trying to dupe her.

A class eight student, Harshada Goyal, was home alone on Tuesday when the incident occurred. Goyal’s father was at work, and her mother Megha, had gone to the market when she received a call on her mother’s phone.

Goyal answered the phone, and the caller introduced himself as Ashok Sharma. He told her that he had to pay her father ₹15,000, and he had given him her mother’s mobile number to transfer the money online through an online money transfer app.

Without suspecting anything unusual, she agreed, and he transferred the money. After a few minutes, he called her again and asked her to check if she received a transfer message.

Goyal told him that she received a message saying ₹10,000 had been transferred to her mother’s account.

The man said that he would pay the remaining amount of ₹5,000 and told her to check the phone again for the second message. When she checked this time, she said she received a message stating ₹50,000 had been transferred to her mother’s account.

He said that he added one zero by mistake and asked the girl to transfer back the excess amount of ₹45,000 to his number.

Sensing something suspicious, Goyal checked her mother’s bank account and realised that not even a single rupee was deposited in her account.

She told the man that she had not received the money and told him that she was putting her father on a conference call to confirm his identity. The caller, however, tried to convince her that he had to make more such payments and for that she required her to transfer the money fast.

The girl realised that he was a fraud and threatened to call her father again when the man said that since it was an online banking payment, it would reflect soon.

“I realised he was a fraud after I checked my mother’s bank account online,” said Goyal. “The police had given a lecture in our school about cyber frauds and their methods, due to which I knew something was wrong,” she added.

Goyal put the caller on hold when he kept asking her about her mother’s bank balance before he transferred the money. She then called the police from her neighbour’s phone and recorded the conversation in which he kept trying to convince her to transfer ₹45,000.

The Nalasopara police have booked the fraud based on the girl’s statement and the call recording, “We are tracing the fraud based on the mobile phone from which Harshada received the call,” said a police officer from Nalasoapara police station.