Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma shares hilarious chat with scammer: ‘Impersonating myself to me’
The fraudster introduced himself as Vijay Shekhar Sharma and asked the real Sharma to save his “new” phone number.
Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma encountered an alleged scammer who tried to impersonate him to obtain sensitive company information.
Sharma took to the social media platform X to share screenshots of a humorous exchange with the alleged scammer, penning a post titled "Impersonating myself to me".
He revealed the chain of WhatsApp messages in which the fraudster introduced himself as Vijay Shekhar Sharma and asked the real Sharma to save his “new” phone number.
In one of the messages, the alleged fraudster also urged Sharma to check and report back on the company’s available funds.
The impersonator also demanded that Sharma share the number and contact details of the finance head of the company, and went so far as to ask Sharma to forward a suspicious .exe file—disguised as a GST document—to the finance executive.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma played along with the alleged scammer and also hilariously urged the impersonator to consider a salary hike.
The encounter, which left many netizens in stitches, also spotlighted the darker side of the digital world, where scamsters target unsuspecting individuals by using sophisticated manoeuvres, advanced techniques, fake profiles, malicious links, and impersonation to commit cyber fraud.
DoT’s new step to tackle cyber fraud
The Telecom Department introduced the 'Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)' on Wednesday. This indicator enables enhanced intelligence sharing with banks, UPI service providersand financial institutions. The department believes this would mark a major step towards tackling cyber fraud and financial crime.
According to the DoT, this will enhance cyber protection and validation checks for mobile numbers flagged with this tool when digital payment is proposed to be made to such numbers.
An official release said FRI allows for swift, targeted, and collaborative action against suspected fraud in the telecom and financial domains.
"...Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has announced sharing of 'Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)' with stakeholders -- an output from a multi-dimensional analytical tool developed as part of the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) to empower financial institutions with advance actionable intelligence for cyber fraud prevention," the DoT release stated.
