Under the guise of a CBI inspector, a con artist stole over Rs 15 lac from a contractor with the intention of launching a CBI case against him.
On April 25, a stranger called the contractor, who lives in Kottara, on his cell phone and said that the victim was receiving threatening calls and that there were rumors going around about financial transactions. The caller stated that a case had been filed at the Mumbai CBI office and threatened to suspend the victim’s mobile number. After then, the call was forwarded to someone else, who was supposedly a senior CBI officer.
The victim was told by the impostor, who was masquerading as a senior CBI officer, that his bank account would be frozen because money had been improperly taken. He gave the victim instructions to download Skype in order to continue communicating and to move the funds to a different account. The victim then allegedly received a notification from the CBI officer saying that if he cooperated and followed directions, the victim’s name may be removed from the case. In the beginning, the contractor paid Rs 2.99 lac to have his name removed from the lawsuit. Subsequently, the online scammers requested additional payments from the victim and disclosed several account data. As a result, the contractor who was victimized transferred Rs 1,501,049. On May 3, though, the victim became wary of the callers and reported them to the cyber police.
