Ahmedabad: A 74-year-old retired consultant from Maninagar allegedly lost Rs 15.5 lakh after clicking on an APK file sent to him on WhatsApp in the guise of a wedding invitation.According to a complaint registered with the cybercrime police on Wednesday, the victim had previously interacted with a Gujarat Pollution Control Board official in connection with his professional work. On Aug 15, he received a WhatsApp message allegedly from the GPCB official’s number containing an APK file with title “Wedding Invitation Card” and a request to attend the wedding with his family.The victim told police that he opened the file, following which it disappeared from his phone. He did not initially suspect that he had been targeted by fraudsters.On Sept 11, he noticed several messages on his phone and became suspicious. His wife subsequently visited two bank branches to get the passbook updated, but the passbook printing machines were not working. A few days later, when the passbook was finally printed, the family discovered that multiple transactions had been carried out from the victim’s account.According to the complaint, Rs 15.5 lakh was transferred through multiple UPI transactions between Sept 2 and 13. The transactions included amounts ranging from Re 1 to nearly Rs 1.6 lakh.The victim immediately contacted the bank’s helpline and got his account blocked. He also reported the incident to national cybercrime helpline 1930.When he contacted the person whose WhatsApp account had sent the APK file, he was allegedly told that the account had been hacked. The victim subsequently approached cybercrime police and registered a case against an unidentified person on Wednesday.
