Perils of online banking: Mumbai woman transfers Rs. 7 lakh to wrong account; then this happened

The perils of online banking were made clear to this woman who accidentally transferred a huge amount of money to the wrong account and the man refused to give it back.

A man claimed that he won the lottery after accidentally receiving Rs. 7 lakh in his account from the woman. (HT_PRINT)

Online banking made online transfer of money from one account to another easier. You just need to have the activated internet and a banking account to transfer money. The entire process is available on the tip of your fingers. But what if you mistakenly send money to the wrong account? Well, that will surely be the lucky day for the person who received the money, but for the person who lost the money, it will be nothing short of a nightmare! Something similar happened to a 38-year old woman living in Mira Road, Mumbai. She was transferring money to one of her relatives, when she accidently filled out the wrong bank account number and instead of sending it to the required person, she transferred a massive amount of Rs. 7 lakh to the wrong bank account holder living in Mumbai, Times of India reported. 

As soon as the woman realised what had happened, she rushed to contact her bank. Sadly, the bank declined to help as it was her fault while sending money and they could not do anything. Later, she approached the cyber cell to intervene in the matter who promptly extracted the information of the person who accidently received the money. Cyber cell asked the person to return the money.

However, the interesting part is that the person refused to return the money! Reports claim that he refused to return the money while claiming that he had won the amount in a lottery. However, when the cyber cell threatened to take action against him, he agreed to transfer back all the money. Within two days, the woman got her money back in the account on July 2.

And this is not just one case! This is way more common than you would expect. Back in 2018, a 40 year old woman from Mumbai lost Rs. 7 lakh while sharing her OTP with an online fraudster who pretended to be a bank manager, a Mashable India report shared. In another case in 2019, a 28 year old Mumbai woman lost Rs. 7 lakh to a fraudster who claimed to be from the US. She used to apparently receive gifts from him. However, by the time she realised it, she had already spent a huge amount of her savings to him.

A small mistake or negligence while sharing online money can cost you a big amount! Hence, it is always advised to transfer money only to a n account that you have positively identified and checked at least twice. Also, do not share any OTP or personal details with an unknown person.