Bengaluru man loses ₹2.24 crore to fraudsters posing as Delhi Customs officials

A total of 25 people were cheated of roughly ₹4 crore similarly in Bengaluru Northeast jurisdiction alone since the beginning of April.

In another cyber fraud case, a 52-year-old software engineer from Bengaluru fell prey to scammers and lost ₹2.24 crore, according to a report by the news agency PTI. The fraudsters posed as Delhi Customs and Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officials to dupe the victim, similar to the recent sensational FedEx scam in Bengaluru.

Bengaluru man loses ₹2.24 Cr to fraudsters posing as Delhi Customs officials

According to the report, Kumaraswamy Sivakumar, a senior software engineer from Jakkur, received a call on March 18 from a person who posed as an officer from Delhi customs. Sivakumar was told that a parcel consisting of 16 passports, 58 ATM cards, and 140 grams of Ecstacy tablets had been found under his name, and it was sent to Delhi from Malaysia. The call was then transferred to another man who called himself an officer from NCB, and Sivakumar was forced to download Skype for further interaction.

The fraudsters then told Sivakumar to transfer money to them to get him out of the case. The victim transferred ₹2.23 crore in eight instalments between March 18 and 24. Sivakumar only realised that he was cheated on April 5 and then filed a case in Bengaluru Northeast Cyber Police Station.

The report further stated that a total of 25 people were cheated of roughly ₹4 crore similarly in Bengaluru Northeast jurisdiction alone since the beginning of April.

Recently, a Bengaluru based woman lawyer was duped and lost ₹15 lakh in a similar incident. She was even made to strip in front of a camera and the scammers later threatened her with her private videos.