Erode (Tamil Nadu): A retired teacher lost Rs 2.46 lakh for believing a fake online message over electricity supply, said cyber crime police on Thursday. According to the police, the retired teacher wanted her brother to remit an amount online for payment of power tariff and the amount was sent to the Electricity Department online. For this, he received a receipt.
After a couple of days, the teacher got a message saying she was defaulting on payment of the electricity bills. The message asked her to download an application in mobile phone to fill up the application for remitting the charges. Failing which, the message mentioned electricity connection would be snapped automatically.
Fearing disruption of supply, she filled the application and sent Rs 10 as amount as per the instruction to an account mentioned in the message. She also received an OTP and sent the OTP number back online. Within a few minutes, she received a message that a sum of Rs 2.46 lakh had been debited from the bank account. On this, the retired teacher lodged a complaint with the cyber crime police which is investigating. (PTI)
