PUNE: The cyber police on Monday registered a case against online fraudsters for allegedly duping two prominent people travel agencies of Rs 62 lakh between April 16 and 17 by fraudulently using their prepaid account details to book flight tickets.
The cyber police have registered cases of cheating and common intention, and also invoked relevant sections of the Information Technology (IT) Act against the accused. According to senior inspector of the cyber police, Meenal Patil, the two travel agencies book air tickets in three private airlines for their clients. “They also book tickets on government airlines. For this purpose, they have prepaid bank accounts which are directly linked to the accounts of airlines,” Patil told TOI.
Patil said that the fraudsters purchased a total of 150 tickets of which two were for international flights. “They used fake ID proofs and misleading email IDs to book the tickets.
For people who had approached them for a ticket, police said, the fraudsters used original identity proofs. They used the money in the travel agencies’ accounts to purchase the tickets,” the cyber police officer added.
Police suspect that the data of prepaid accounts was leaked after which the scamsters used it to cheat the travel agencies.
“We suspect that some more travel agencies may have been defrauded by the scamsters in a similar way,” Patil said.
The fraudsters, according to the police, used different internet servers to book the tickets and received online payments to different bank accounts from the persons who booked the tickets.
Police said further investigation is on and it is trying to be ascertained as to which internet servers were used for making the transactions.
Last month, in a similar incident, a travel agent from the national capital was duped by online fraudsters of several lakhs.
The cyber police have registered cases of cheating and common intention, and also invoked relevant sections of the Information Technology (IT) Act against the accused. According to senior inspector of the cyber police, Meenal Patil, the two travel agencies book air tickets in three private airlines for their clients. “They also book tickets on government airlines. For this purpose, they have prepaid bank accounts which are directly linked to the accounts of airlines,” Patil told TOI.
Patil said that the fraudsters purchased a total of 150 tickets of which two were for international flights. “They used fake ID proofs and misleading email IDs to book the tickets.
For people who had approached them for a ticket, police said, the fraudsters used original identity proofs. They used the money in the travel agencies’ accounts to purchase the tickets,” the cyber police officer added.
Police suspect that the data of prepaid accounts was leaked after which the scamsters used it to cheat the travel agencies.
“We suspect that some more travel agencies may have been defrauded by the scamsters in a similar way,” Patil said.
The fraudsters, according to the police, used different internet servers to book the tickets and received online payments to different bank accounts from the persons who booked the tickets.
Police said further investigation is on and it is trying to be ascertained as to which internet servers were used for making the transactions.
Last month, in a similar incident, a travel agent from the national capital was duped by online fraudsters of several lakhs.