Indore: Imposter again tries to dupe people in vice-chancellor's name

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Nearly six months after he had succeeded in duping a professor of Rs 2.5 lakh, apparently, the same conman made his third attempt this year to dupe people of their hard-earned money by impersonating the DAVV vice-chancellor professor Renu Jain.

Using Jain’s picture on his WhatsApp account, the conman is sending a message to the teaching and non-teaching staff on their phone numbers requesting them to purchase Amazon pay gift cards.

The message read that she was busy at a crucial meeting and wanted the recipient of the message to purchase Amazon pay gift cards on her behalf. The university’s executive council member Mangal Mishra got one such message.

The message read, “It's me, Dr Renu Jain (this side)… There is something I need you to please do for me urgently as I am currently attending a very crucial meeting with limited phone access. Are you familiar with Amazon gift cards? How quickly can you arrange these gift cards because I need to send them out (to some people) in less than an hour. I would provide you with the type of gift cards and the amount of each. I will reimburse you before the end of the day.”

The common demanded six Amazon pay E gift cards of Rs 10,000 each and wanted them to be forwarded on a link shared by him.

As the message did not come from the number saved in the VC’s name on his mobile phone, Mishra did not purchase the gift cards. Instead, he put the message on social media to caution people about the fraudster.

This is the third attempt, apparently, by the same conman. In the first attempt, he had managed to dupe Prof Rekha Gadre of Rs 2.5 lakh in April.

On Gadre’s complaint, an FIR was registered against an unidentified person who remains untraceable. The second attempt was in September, but the VC foiled his attempt by alerting people on social media.