Former pilot gets dose of her own medicine

A former commercial pilot must have never dreamt that cheats would one day do something to her what she herself had once done with government authorities – fraud.
 

A former Indigo pilot and a resident of Lawrence Road, who put the lives of thousands of passengers at risk by allegedly procuring a flying licence on forged documents, has now lost Rs 4 lakh in an internet banking fraud, forcing her to approach police.

The victim was named by Directorate General of Civil Aviation for submitting fake certificates in March 2011. On June 20, she approached the Rajouri Garden police station reporting that she was duped.

She told police that her account with ICICI Bank was misued after she was asked to update her Know Your Customer details on June 19 with Vodafone customer care centre or via e-mail.

“The person who called introduced himself as a representative of Vodafone. On the same day, the victim replied on an e-mail which she allegedly received from Vodafone,” said a source.

In the e-mail, she sent a scanned copy of her driving licence and pan card. Later, on June 20, she found her phone’s SIM card blocked. 

To inquire, she went to Vodafone’s store in Punjabi Bagh where she was told that somebody had reported her original SIM card as lost and collected another SIM card from Vodafone’s store in Hari Nagar at about 11.30 am.

The unidentified man had submitted a copy of her driving licence and pan card with forged signatures. 

At about 12.40 pm, the victim’s phone got activated after the SIM collected by the man was deactivated. Soon, she was shocked to receive a message about password for funds transfer from her bank account.  

“Since I had not made any transaction with ICICI Bank at that time from my account, I called up the bank’s phone banking and blocked my debit card and reported about the fraud,” the victim stated in her complaint.

On inquiring from the bank about the withdrawals from her account, the bank informed that five withdrawals between from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh were made through net-banking. One person has been arrested in the case and the probe is on to recover the amount.