Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Nov 5: Fraudsters who tried to swindle a retired top cop learnt a valuable lesson after he made them return his money.

Retired director general of police (DGP) of Karnataka, Shankar Bidari, has succeeded in recovering the money which the online frausters had swindled from his bank account.

Recently, the cheats had called Bidari in the guise of being the personnel of a bank helpline, and had siphoned off Rs 89,000 from his account. Bidari had filed a complaint in the cyber police station here.

Thereafter, Bidari had called the fraudsters, duly warning them that he will find out their location and catch them irrespective of where they hide, unless his money was returned.

On October 11, Shankar Bidari received a mobile message, confirming that the money he had lost was credited into his account.

Explaining the situation, Bidari said that he was preparing to leave for Dubai and had visakited the bank ATM to withdraw money. At that time, he said, the fraudster called him over the phone telling him that his bank account would be frozen unless the PAN number is updated in the bank records.

"As I was in a hurry to leave for Dubai, I shared the OTP number received in my mobile phone and followed their instructions. After a few days, when making payment for online shopping, I saw the message about my money having been fleeced. A sum of Rs 89,000 had been taken away from my account," he said.

Bidari stated that the person who committed this fraud was of West Bengal origin and he confessed to his mistake and remitted the entire amount.

Besides, Bidari's email had been hacked in February this year. From that email account, requests had been sent to Bidari's friends, seeking to remit Rs 25,000 urgently to a Punjab National Bank account mentioned therein. A friend of his who saw the email had remitted Rs 25,000 after which the fact that it was a fraud had come to light. The police had arrested three persons from Nagaland in March this year in this connection.