LUCKNOW, Sept. 1 -- What started as an attempt to sell an old sofa for Rs.14,000 turned into a nightmare for a Gomti Nagar resident, who ended up losing nearly Rs.2 lakh online to a scammer.

Ram Mohan Yadav, 40, had listed his sofa on a popular online marketplace with a quote of Rs.14,000. He was approached by one Nitant Kumar Singh, who agreed to the price and asked Yadav to pay him via a QR transaction, Yadav was quoted as saying in the FIR.

Yadav scanned a QR code that he received on his phone. "I saw Rs.14,000 written on the screen, so I thought it was safe. But instead of receiving money, Rs.99,665 was debited from my bank account," he said. Before he could react, the fraudster repeated the process and withdrew another Rs.98,000 fr...