A central government employee has been duped out of almost Rs 1 lakh by a caller who pretended to be related to a reputable courier company.
The caller informed the victim that his documents were being used to transport contraband from Mumbai to Taiwan.
The caller then got the call connected to a man who claimed to be a senior officer of Mumbai police and asked him to make a transaction to verify his credentials.
According to the complainant, who lives near Park Circus, a call came from an unknown number where the caller introduced himself as a representative of a courier company.
“The caller said that a consignment of contraband substances was getting transported from Mumbai to Taiwan using my personal details. When I said that I had not been to Mumbai for several years, he said that my bank account was linked with that consignment,” the complainant, a central government official, told Metro on Thursday.
The caller then reportedly told the complainant that he would get him connected to Mumbai police who were already looking into the
matter.
“I was asked to wait. The phone was not disconnected and I was asked to press a few options on the phone before someone else took the phone and started speaking, saying that he was from Mumbai
police,” the complainant added.
The “fake” police officer sent the complainant a photograph of his identity card that showed him as a police
officer.
The complainant searched the name over the Internet and found that indeed there was an officer in Mumbai police by that name.
Once convinced, the complainant was told that a hawala transaction of around Rs 98,000 had been made using his bank account.
“I was scared when I was told about the transaction. They told me to make a transaction of the same amount from my account so they could verify my account credentials. I got so nervous that I made the transaction to a given bank account and transferred the same amount. I realised later that it was a fraudulent call and that I had made a mistake,” he said.
The complainant reported the matter to Beniapukur police station earlier this week.
The police in Calcutta said this is not the first case where fraudsters had used the identity of officers of other states to cheat Calcuttans.
A few weeks ago, another Calcuttan was duped of his money by a fraudster who had introduced himself as former CBI special director Rakesh Asthana.
A probe is on, said officers of Beniapukur police station.