Pune doctor duped by fraudsters in drug parcel scam, loses Rs 1 crore

Pune: In a distressing case of cybercrime, a senior doctor from Pune was coerced and manipulated by cyber criminals into transferring Rs 1 crore under the guise of a false investigation in a drug-in parcel scam.

The doctor who is in his 50s was allegedly pressurised and duped by criminals for a week who threatened him of identity theft, drug trafficking, and money laundering to extract a large sum of money from him.

According to the cyber police, the victim lost his money after he was allegedly coerced into isolating himself in a hotel, staying on continuous audio calls for 'surveillance', and liquidating investments to transfer money to 'government safe accounts' for six days in the first week of March.

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The ordeal began with a phone call from someone claiming to be a courier executive, alleging that a parcel sent by the doctor to Taiwan contained illegal items. The items involved five passports and 200 grams of MDMA drugs.

Despite denying involvement, the doctor was allegedly coerced into believing his identity was being misused for drug trafficking and money laundering. Later, the scammers asked him to file an FIR at the Mumbai Crime Branch.

They gave him the option to either go to the police station in person or he can contact an officer through a Skype video call to register a case. He then received multiple Skype calls from a profile with a logo of Mumbai Crime Branch and persons wearing police uniforms and using names of actual serving IAS and IPS officers including a serving police commissioner in Maharashtra and former governor of the RBI.

The situation escalated when the doctor was asked to provide photos of his family for purported security reasons. He was asked to show his Aadhar card and told him that an FIR had been registered in his name and was shown a paper with the fake letterhead of the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Following this, the scammers then began to ask for his financial information and extracted the details of bank accounts, savings, investments etc by alleged force. To pressure the doctor even more, the accused scammers told him that he would have to isolate himself in a hotel.

Agreeing with the scammers, the doctor booked a hotel room. He was then told that he was under surveillance and was made to keep an audio call on constantly. He was told that till the time verification of his account was done, he would have to transfer over Rs 15 lakh from his account to a ‘government account’ — which was a fraudulent account of the cybercriminals.

After the transfer, he was subsequently manipulated into liquidating his investments and savings and was made to transfer over Rs 85 lakh again to those fraudulent accounts. After these transfers, he was sent letters with fake letterheads of the RBI stating that the funds had been received.

However, the doctor soon realised that he had fallen victim to an elaborate cyber scam when he was asked to send his family members pictures for ‘security purposes’ and the scammers asked for extra money to keep his family members from being prosecuted.

Cyber police officials told The Indian Express, said that while the modus operandi for the cyber fraud mirrored that of a ‘drugs in parcel’ scam, the relentless pressure from the perpetrators compounded the severity of the situation for the victim.

“We have launched a probe into the case and are working on the details obtained from the bank accounts used by the Cybercriminals,” said an officer from Cyber police station.

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