Cyber frauds dupe city-based company of ₹3.98 crore

Mumbai A Jogeshwari-based company specialising in pharmaceutical and cosmetics machines trading, was defrauded to the tune of ₹3

Mumbai A Jogeshwari-based company specialising in pharmaceutical and cosmetics machines trading, was defrauded to the tune of ₹3.98 crores by online frauds. The cheats posed as one of the suppliers of the company made them deposit €468,033 (equivalent to around ₹4 crores) in their bank accounts under false pretexts.

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The Mumbai cyber police, which is investigating the case, said the prima facie looks like the conmen created an email ID similar to that of the complainant, and even fraudulently got access to the mobile number of one of the Italy-based suppliers to cheat the complainant company.

A case has been registered on the complaint of the CEO Shirish Vaidya of Vaxom Packaging Private Limited that is into trading and sales and service of pharmaceutical machines.

“The company mostly imports various pharmaceutical machines from Italy and sells it in the country,” said a police officer from Mumbai cyber.

On September 9, 2022, the company had given a purchase order to its counterparts Comas SRL in Italy for supply of certain pharmaceutical machines and had even paid €138,000 as initial amount.

On November 9, 2022, Vaidya’s office again called up the Italy-based company to generate invoice so that they could pay the remaining amount.

“However, the new bank account that Vaidya’s company got was different from the earlier one where he had transferred the cash. So, they checked with the Italy’s company sales head who told them to deposit the money in the bank account sent to them as he was traveling,” said a police officer from Cyber police station.

Accordingly, On November 18, €468,033 were deposited into the bank account mentioned in the email. However, Vaidya’s company got no confirmation about the payment received by Comas SRL.

When the sale executive of Comas SRL met Vaidya he showed them the SWIFT payment copy, however the executive said it wasn’t their bank account so they had not received the money.

“When Vaidya showed him the emails, he said they were not sent by his company. Vaidya then came to know somebody had made similar email IDs of both the companies and communicated and even sent emails to his bank to release the payment,” said the police officer.

“We have registered a case under sections 419 (punishment for cheating by personation), 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery) of IPC and under various sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000 against unknown people and are searching for them,” said a police officer from Cyber police station.