Falling prey to an online lottery scam, chartered accountant Pankaj Kumar (name changed), 25, transferred nearly Rs 85 lakh to account numbers provided by the cyber criminals, who duped him by showing frivolous dreams having won lottery money of 10 lakh pounds. Now, all his efforts to contact the online cheats are proving futile. His emails are not delivered to inboxes of once-active email addresses and the all the cellphone numbers provided to him are "switched off".

Pankaj Kumar had received a text on his cellphone initially and had communicated with the accused over phone and emails, thereafter. Kumar, who belongs to a middleclass family of Mohali, borrowed this money from private lenders chargeable at high rate of interest, and is now in an acute dilemma on how to repay the amount.

Investigating officer Bahadur Singh said: "Kumar replied to the text message on his cellphone and sent his personal details like his email id and residential address. The cyber accused communicated with him through emails and he transferred Rs 85 lakh to their accounts. The money was borrowed from the market." (TNN)