A Gurgaon-based startup founder has shared how a scammer impersonated him over email and attempted to dupe one of his employees into buying gift vouchers worth ₹25,000. The scammer posed as Sankalp Shree, co-Founder and director of Spectent, and carried out a seemingly genuine conversation with the employee before asking for the purchase.
Shree shared details of the incident in a LinkedIn post, along with screenshots of the email exchange, saying he "genuinely couldn't believe how convincing they looked". "Looks like I've been secretly emailing my employees... asking them for money. Except, I wasn't," he wrote in the caption of the post.
The founder said that the conversation began with a simple message from the impersonator asking the employee, "Are you in the office?" The scammer then claimed to have an important task and said he wanted to surprise some "hardworking employees" with bonus voucher cards as a token of appreciation.
The employee responded that he could help, following which the impersonator instructed him to download the Amazon Pay app and search for Apple Store code vouchers under the recharge section. According to the email exchange between the two, the scammer asked the employee to purchase five vouchers worth ₹5,000 each, totalling ₹25,000, and to send the codes one after another. The scammer also promised to reimburse the amount by the end of the day.
How was the scam exposed?
When the employee appeared hesitant about making the transaction, the scammer changed tactics. In another email, the impersonator claimed, "I'm not able to make any transactions right now", and asked the employee to borrow the amount from someone else, promising to refund it once he was able to transfer the money.
{{/usCountry}}When the employee appeared hesitant about making the transaction, the scammer changed tactics. In another email, the impersonator claimed, "I'm not able to make any transactions right now", and asked the employee to borrow the amount from someone else, promising to refund it once he was able to transfer the money.
{{/usCountry}}Fortunately, the employee did not proceed without checking with Shree. The founder said that the most concerning part was that the emails did not appear to be obviously fake and that the conversation felt genuine.
"As a founder, I'd heard of phishing emails, but I never imagined someone would impersonate me to target my own team," Shree wrote.
"This was a reminder that cyber attacks are no longer just about hacking systems, they're about manipulating people," he added.