Mumbai: Imposter booked for sending fraudulent email to 77 MIDC employees posing as CEO, demanding gift cards

A case of impersonation and defamation has been registered against a cyber fraudster who posed as the Chief Executive Officer of Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), an IAS officer, and sent a fraudulent email to 77 employees of the corporation. The fraudster sought the WhatsApp numbers of the employees and demanded money from them in the form of Amazon Gift Cards.

According to police sources, on April 5, the complainant and 76 other employees of the MIDC had received an email on their official IDs, which was allegedly sent by the MIDC CEO P Anbalagan, which read– “are you available. Kindly drop your WhatsApp number for an urgent matter. Best regards, P. Anbagalan, CEO.”

Soon after receiving the email, the curious employees immediately contacted the MIDC CEO's office, only to learn that no such email was drafted and sent by their boss.

The matter was soon brought to the notice of the MIDC's Information Technology (IT) department, and an official from the department sent his number from one of the emails received. He also noticed that emails to all the employees were sent from an imposter's email– ugochiue123@gmail.com.

Subsequently, the imposter sent a WhatsApp message to the number, asking the victims to send money in the form of Amazon gift cards. Upon checking the WhatsApp profile of the sender, there was a picture of the MIDC CEO P. Anbalagan. Realizing that the fraudster was posing as the IAS officer and duping people by impersonating him, a complaint was lodged at the MIDC police station in Andheri (E).

Acting on the complaint, a case of impersonation and defamation was registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act.

While no arrests have been made in the case so far, police are probing the matter and are on the lookout for the unidentified accused.