Srinagar, June 17: Impersonators from an unidentified location have extracted Rs 23,000 from the virtual friends of a man from Soura area of Srinagar through his trashed Facebook account.
The fraudulent transaction as per the user took place within a span of just 45 minutes on Tuesday evening.
News agency GNS quoting the bona fide user, Aijaz Ahmad, reported that he was shocked on learning from a few of his friends that they have transferred money to him.
“When I enquired as to why and how, the friends replied that it was me only who asked them to transact the amount,” Aijaz told GNS.
The agency quoted Aijaz’s friends through him saying that they received messages through his Messenger application, a dedicated Facebook messaging app asking to transfer money to him.
As per Aijaz, the three friends transferred a total amount of twenty-three thousand rupees via three different transactions to a particular account number.
The apparent hacking victim said that he has created a new profile and left the old one as such, less knowing that it will create such a mess.
“However on learning about this I accessed the trashed profile and saw messages sent to different accounts added to my friend list asking them to transfer money on different pretexts”, he said adding that he has taken screenshots of all the communicated messages.
The man has now registered a complaint with the nearest police station where the officials he said have assured him all possible help.
“I even approached the bank branch and took the matter with them also and asked them to scrutinize the account on which the transactions were made”, he said.
Appealing to the netizens to remain vigilant about how they use social media platforms, he further said that such frauds and scams are a routine now and people using any social media platform should be extra cautious in such a precarious situation.