Hyderabad: Cyber-crime police of Hyderabad have booked case against a Malaysian private visa portal for allegedly duping a retired IAS officer, and taking money from her account.
KVM Prasad, the Cyber Crime Inspector confirmed receiving a complaint from Sujatha Rao, the former Union secretary, Ministry of health. On February 13, Rao had visited Malaysianonlineevisa, thinking it was a government portal, she approached them for a tourist visa, Prasad said.
However, money from her account got deducted by the portal managers, and she was not provided with her visa. She later got a message from her bank stating that `9,789 had been debited from her account by the agency. On this, she wrote an email to the portal, asking them about ‘how come money was deducted from her account without her knowledge?’ The travel agency staff replied saying they withdrawn 147 USD as service charge.
“The next day again `6,815 amount was debited from her card and she realised that the portal is fake and they fraudulently debited money from her account. She also wrote to the travel agency to refund her amount. Even as the travel agency staff replied in consenting to refund the amount, they did not return it,” the retired IAS officer said in her complaint.