Mumbai News: Assistant Professor Loses ₹1 Lakh To Fake Cops

Mumbai: A 41-year-old assistant professor from a Vikhroli-based college was duped of Rs 1 lakh by scammers who posed as police officers.

The complainant Kamal Singh (name changed), received a video call from an unknown number on June 2 from two people in police uniform, who introduced themselves as police officers placed at Delhi Police’s Crime Branch unit. Singh was told his Aadhaar card was used to create several bank accounts and these bank accounts happened to be in the trail of several money laundering incidents. He was told that Reserve Bank of India has reported to the crime branch. Singh was told that he would have to send in some money which would be ‘investigated’ whether they were white or black. He was also told that he would receive another call from an IPS officer George Mathew for further procedure.

On June 3, ‘IPS officer Mathew’ called and informed Singh that his bank accounts had several black money transactions and displayed an ‘arrest warrant’ for him. For further verification, Mathew provided some bank details – which belonged to the branch of Ahmedabad in Gujarat – and told him to pay Rs1 lakh, which Mathew assured would be paid back immediately. Singh did as instructed, and even sent photocopies of his passbook as proof of the transaction. However, when asked about the money being sent back, Mathew said the server of RBI is down and it will take at least 24 hours to reverse the payment.

On June 4, they called Singh again to ‘check’ if he received the reverse payment, but Singh got suspicious and cancelled the call. Subsequently, Singh registered an online complaint with the cybercrime portal and later registered a complaint with the Ghatkopar police against unknown persons.