A Bengaluru man lost Rs 1.52 crore to a courier scam after fake police officers accused him of sending illegal items in a parcel and money laundering.

Dangerous Delivery: Drugs in Your Package!

Adarsh V.KNovember 21, 23 cyber security, Scams

A pensioner living in Bengaluru, Karnataka recently experienced a huge loss of Rs 1.52 crore after falling victim to a courier scam. In this scam, fraudsters posing as police officials or NCRB agents contact individuals and falsely accuse them of illegal activities related to sending and receiving packages containing “illegal substances”. The prevalence of this scam has increased since the beginning of the year, and is becoming more common recently.

According to the Indian Express, the victim, Debashish Das, 66, received a call on November 10 from a person claiming to be a FedEx employee named Kartikeya. The employee then informed Das that a case had been registered against him in Mumbai as six credit cards, expired passports and up to 950g of MDMA were found in a courier sent to Taiwan in his name.

Now, this is quite a similar incident that we reported in July this year when a woman from Bengaluru, Keka De, received a fake call from FedEx Mumbai.

In Das’s case, he was told to contact Mumbai’s Andheri cyber crime police station through a Skype call. When he finally did, fake police officer Pradeep Sawant told him that the bank accounts in his name were found to be involved in illegal activities involving money laundering.

Then a person pretending to be a ‘DCP’ told Das to close all his fixed deposits and transfer all his savings to a joint account.

This is where things went south. Debashish Das eventually transferred a whopping Rs 1.52 crore from his SBI bank account to the scammer’s account at Punjab National Bank. The fraudsters had assured Das that they would transfer the funds back to the source after checking whether he was involved in money laundering. However, after receiving the funds, the fake police officers disappeared and the communication stopped. Since then, the case has been registered at South CEN police station.

It should be noted that this scam is quite common these days and due to the seriousness of the allegations made by these scammers, the victims lose their temper and end up believing them causing huge financial losses.

Readers are advised to check the websites of courier companies or e-commerce sites before falling for these scams. FYI, Indian Customs does not work through phone calls, WhatsApp calls or Skype. Customs also does not ask for UPI payments or online fund transfers.