A heart-wrenching story of fraud has come to light from Hyderabad, which is a big warning for all of us. A vicious gang of cyber thieves targeted a 77-year-old elderly woman and, within 9 months, slowly stole Rs 1.8 crore from her account. To commit such a big fraud, this gang sometimes described itself as a ‘big businessman’ of the country and sometimes as a big official of RBI. How did this game of deception start? This whole game started with a WhatsApp call received in February. Someone on the phone said in a very sweet voice, “Congratulations, you have won the lottery worth Rs 2 crore!” Initially aunty ignored it, but the thugs did not give up. Two weeks later, another man called and identified himself as a ‘big businessman’. He took the aunty into confidence by talking and asked for her bank account details to send the lottery money. And then the real web of deception started… When the thieves came to know that net banking was not activated in the aunty’s account, they very cleverly sent her to the bank and got the net banking activated, and then also took her user ID and password from her. After this, they played another trick. He sent aunty a fake ‘government letter’ with the photo of the Prime Minister in it, in which it was written that RBI has approved the transfer of Rs 2 crore. This one letter won the complete trust of the aunty. They took control of the phone and also broke the FD. The thieves, posing as RBI officers, also took copies of the Aadhaar and PAN cards of the aunty and her husband. Not only this, he took complete control of Aunty’s phone by sending a link. After this, he played another emotional gamble. He said, “As per RBI rules, before depositing Rs 2 crore, some big amount should be visible in your account.” By tricking her, they also made her lose her years’ savings, i.e. her FD (Fixed Deposit). In these 9 months, between March and December, the thieves made 123 small transactions from 4 different bank accounts and withdrew all the money, so that the bank also did not have any suspicion. How was this secret revealed? This entire fraud came to light when aunty went to her bank for some work. When he got his passbook updated, the ground slipped from under his feet… the account which should have contained crores of rupees, now had only Rs 6,000 left in it. When he tried to contact those phone numbers, they were all switched off. Only then did he realize that the biggest betrayal of his life had happened to him. The police have registered the case and are investigating. But this incident teaches us all that greed and trust both have a price, which is sometimes more than our lifetime earnings.