Gurugram woman orders alcohol online, loses money to scammers: How to stay safe

livemint.com:

₹30,000 while attempting to purchase a bottle of whiskey online. In an unfortunate event, her Google search directed her to a scammer, resulting in the loss of her money. As per a TOI report, a 32-year-old woman living in Gurugram purchased a bottle of whiskey online.

Failing to locate a local wine delivery service through Google, she came across a phone number that purported to offer doorstep alcohol delivery. What began as a simple search for a convenient service culminated in a sequence of transactions, leading to a financial loss of ₹33,000 to scammers. Relating her encounter to TOI, the woman detailed that following her call to the mentioned number and payment of ₹3,000 for a bottle of Glenfiddich via UPI, she received a subsequent call demanding extra funds for delivery.

Detecting a potential scam, she opted to cancel the order. Subsequently, the scammers insisted she send ₹5, assuring a refund and providing a UPI transaction description featuring a sequence of numbers and characters presented as a GST number. At first, the reimbursement of the ₹5 payment appeared successful.

However, shortly thereafter, the woman received a notification indicating a debit of ₹29,986 from her bank account. Disturbed by this development, she promptly reached out to her bank and took measures to block the account. Despite refraining from downloading any dubious applications that might compromise her phone screen, Shekhawat learned from information provided by the police that her account details had been exposed following the ₹5 transaction.