Between March 19 and April 22 this year, a senior citizen in Mumbai, who is a director of several companies, was defrauded of Rs 1.8 crore by cybercriminals posing as law enforcement officers in a drugs-in-parcel scam. After realizing he had been scammed, he filed a complaint with the police.
The police reported that the scam began on March 19 when the elderly man received a call from someone claiming to represent a courier company. The caller alleged that a parcel he had sent from Lucknow to Myanmar was rejected because customs officers discovered nearly 20 passports and 150 grams of narcotics inside. The caller also stated that his Aadhar card had been used as identification.
The caller then transferred the call to someone posing as a UP police officer, who subsequently connected him to supposed cyber police, and then to an alleged CBI officer due to the gravity of the situation. The person impersonating a CBI officer instructed the victim to install the Telegram app and added him to a group bearing his name, claiming it included officers from UP police and cyber police.
The fraudsters, under various pretexts, coerced the man into paying money from his savings account, breaking his fixed deposits, and transferring money from his mutual funds. In total, Rs 1.8 crore was transferred to the scammers, who eventually deleted the Telegram group.
After realizing the deception, the senior citizen lodged a complaint with the police.
