FedEx Courier scam: Private college professor and Software Engineer loses Rs.35 Lakhs to scammers posing as Mumbai police

Pramesh S Jain & Yogesh K Porwar 

A 59-year-old professor of a private college and a software engineer in the city become the latest victim of Fedex courier scam where the accused posing as Mumbai crime branch officials before emptying their saving account total worth over ₹ 35 lakh in separate incidents.

The victim,VS Ravishankar,resident of Jalahalli and professor at a private college received call from a man identifying himself as Ashwin Saxena from Fedex company Mumbai.

He informed Mr.Ravishankar that there was a parcel in his name to Taiwan containing illegal items and Narcotics and they had informed this to Mumbai police.

Shocked Ravishankar tried to recover when he received within minutes and this time from Santagi Ghorpade, police officer from Mumbai crime branch and began to question him on the pretext of inquiry.

After few minutes of grilling Ghorpade informed him that he looks innocent and someone trying to implicate him and assured to help through a public Prosecutor of Mumbai High Court and shared a number.

When Ravishankar called the number shared with him the person claimed to be PK Chawan assured to help and sought the bank account details for further verification of ED officials.

Chawan asked him not to reveal this with anyone until the case is resolved failing which he threatened to get him arrested by Mumbai police.

Scared Ravishankar did not inform this to anyone from March 14 to 21 until the saving in his bank accounts total worth ₹ 13,22,000 has been transferred with an assurance of verification to ascertain money laundering .

The accused even assured to revert the money into the account soon after the probe is completed .

Mr.Ravishankar waited for the money and response from the officials from March 21 to March 30,before he made futile attempts to approach them and later realized that he has been duped .

Based on the complaint the North Division cyber crime police have registered a case under IT act and cheating for further investigations.

Similar incident has been reported with Srikanth BV, a software engineer from Banashankari third state on Tuesday.

The accused posing as Mumbai crime branch officials threatened to book him under NDPS act for smuggling MDMA to Taiwan and forced him to share his bank account before transferring a total of ₹ 21.51 lakh.

The accused assured to return the money after ED officials probe and asked him not to discuss this with anyone..

A senior police officer who is probing the case said that it is very unfortunate that highly educated people are becoming victims of fedex scams.

People who receive such calls claiming to be police officials should not entertain such calls.Any police officials would not sought personal details or bank account details for verification,a police officer,said .