Fake numbers used to clean out bank accounts of food app’s customers

On June 20, a woman in Bengaluru was unhappy with her Zomato order and wanted to get a refund. Not finding a customer care number on the food delivery app, she decided to Google.

The search threw up several numbers. She chose one and dialled. The voice at the other end was exactly how she’d expect customer service to be: calm and reassuring. She hung up content with the response that the money would be refunded in her bank account within 24 hours.

In the next few minutes, however, her entire bank account was cleaned out.


Fake customer care numbers attributed to Zomato are popping up on Google searches, tricking customers who are unaware that the food delivery app does not have a call-in facility. Zomato has filed a police complaint.

The company, which was recently targeted by trolls online for its rebuff of a man in Madhya Pradesh who posted a comment about the religion of a delivery executive, cited several complaints it had received from patrons about fake customer care numbers.

The Bengaluru woman had called the number 9134425406 and was told the refund amount could be transferred immediately via Google Pay and she would have to download a mobile application called ‘Any Desk’. On following the steps dictated by the voice on phone, all the money in her bank account (Rs 17,286) got debited.

The application is still available for download on Play Store, though the number was out of service when TOI called at the time of writing this report on Tuesday evening. The service announcement that services to this number are suspended was in Bengali, suggesting it’s a West Bengal based number. The food aggregator had told police it does not have a customer care number at all and redresses complaints through a chat service available on the application.

The company, which is headquartered in Gurgaon, approached the cyber police station in the city to file a case against the fraudsters on July 25. After preliminary investigation, a case was registered on Tuesday.