A prominent orthopaedic surgeon in the city was cheated of more than Rs 4.5 lakh on Saturday afternoon by cyber thugs, who had used a unique modus operandi.

The surgeon lodged a complaint with the Survey Park police station soon after he received three messages from a concerned private bank, where he holds an account.

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He was tricked into revealing his personal details, including PAN card number after getting an anonymous call on Saturday afternoon. The caller, claiming to be an employee of Bandhan Bank, wanted to verify his savings account number in the same bank.

“I got a call from 6370919593 & 9064237792 numbers and the person on the other side of the line told me that he would verify my Bandhan Bank A/C

No ……….0040. I disclosed my PAN No, & date of birth to the caller. Soon after, Rs 4.5 lakh was deducted from my Bandhan Bank account. I got the call about 2.30pm today (6/4/24). Hence, I would like to request you to take necessary action as per law,” the complaint lodged by the doctor with the Survey Park police station stated.

“Yes, a complaint has been lodged by a doctor, a resident of Santoshpur Road, with our police station on 6 April. With the guidance of the cyber crime specialists at Lalbazar, our team is investigating the case and we hope that the entire amount will be recovered and given back to the complainant,” Pralay Bhattacharjee, officer-in-charge of Survey Park thana told The Statesman.

“We have already blocked the money so that it can’t be transferred on transit to the account of the cyber crooks. The gang has also been traced but we can’t divulge further details in connection with their modus operandi and areas of their operations for the sake of investigations,” Mr Bhattacharjee said.

Cybercrime experts, including police, felt that the scamsters posing as bank officials are using new tactics to fraud.

They send text messages to the consumers saying, “Your bank account will be suspended today. Please update your PAN number, click here link… Thank you.”

This tactic of sending text messages is to make the recipients panic so that the latter could promptly react by clicking any link to update PAN card numbers resulting in sudden disastrous consequences, police officials said.