Naresh Gujral, son of former Chief Minister IK Gujral, has been scammed $7.68 crore by fraudsters who impersonated him and tricked his company’s chief financial officer (CFO) into transferring the huge amount through at least four real-time gross settlement (RTGS) transactions last week.
After he filed a complaint, the case was handed over to the Delhi Police’s cybercrime investigative unit, the Intelligence and Strategic Operations (IFSO), which allegedly froze… $HT had earlier reported that Rs 4.28 crore of the total amount so far.
“Based on Naresh Gujral’s complaint, an FIR was registered on June 16. Immediate action was taken and an amount of money was seized.” $4.28 crore of the total fraud amount $Rs 7.68 lakh crore has been marked as lien/retention in several banks. “Efforts are being made to arrest the people involved in the scam,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (IFSO) Vineet Kumar told HT.
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The scam reportedly occurred between June 12 and 16, where the scammers pretended to be Naresh and hacked his WhatsApp account.
Naresh holds a Chartered Accountancy degree and was a member of Rajya Sabha from 2007 to 2022.
How did the scammers gain access to Naresh Gujral’s accounts?
Naresh runs a company in Okhla, south Delhi, which manufactures textiles, leather and other apparel products. In his complaint, he said that the fraudsters had cheated his company’s CFO, Shubham Singh, police said.
On June 12, Singh allegedly received a WhatsApp message from a number bearing Naresh’s profile picture. The impersonator reportedly told Singh that he wanted to deposit money into a bank account through real-time gross settlement (RTGS) transactions. After receiving the letter, the employee deposited it $The officer said that Rs 7.68 crore was in the account through four RTGS transactions assuming that the messages were from Naresh and were therefore genuine.
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Initial investigation revealed that the fraudsters hacked into the WhatsApp account, impersonated Naresh Gujral, and tricked his employee into transferring money, a police official told HT on the condition of anonymity.
The official said the money was transferred to three or four accounts, although nearly 70% of it was frozen.
Transactions went unnoticed
The Naresh employee reportedly felt that money transfers were part of the company’s routine transactions. However, the bank reported the transaction due to the presence of huge amounts of money. The scam came to light only on June 16 when Singh sensed something fishy about the transactions and informed Naresh’s daughter about it.
When she inquired about the matter from her father, he denied giving any such instructions to the CFO. That’s when the family realized they had fallen prey to an online scam.
