KANPUR: In a rarest of rare case, a quick-thinking TV journalist based in Kanpur turned the tables on a cyber fraud who tried to put him in a digital arrest and instead made him cough up over Rs 10,000.
The incident unfolded on March 6. Bhupendra Singh was busy preparing for his wedding anniversary celebrations when he received an unsettling telephone call. The caller, masquerading as a CBI officer, attempted to instil fear by claiming that Singh’s compromising videos had gone viral, warranting immediate legal action. To convince him, the fraudster sent 48 morphed photos and 32 videos via WhatsApp and said a report was filed against him.
Initially rattled by the menacing call, Singh’s journalistic instincts kicked in when he noticed discrepancies in the supposed complaint sent to him. Utilising Google Lens, he swiftly uncovered the fraudulent nature of the communication. “They claimed to be CBI officers, but CBI doesn’t handle such cases – regional police teams do. Secondly, the document they sent claiming to be a case copy wasn’t genuine. When I put it through Google Lens, it clearly showed it was a fake document,” he told TOI.
Once the journo could see it through, he decided to play along for a bit longer – just for a story if not anything else.
He pretended to be unsettled and pleaded with him to find a way out of it. The fraudster claimed it would cost Rs 16,000 to close the case. Bhupendra assured him he would arrange the money. On March 7, the fraudster called again for the money. By then, the journo was armed with his yarn of tales. Bhupendra spun a story about a stolen gold chain worth Rs 40,000 that he had recently pawned to a friendly jeweller and told him that he could get the chain back for just Rs 3,000. He pretended to be a student with little resources. When Bhupendra sent him a picture of the chain, the fraudster sent him Rs 3,000 through UPI.
On March 9, the fraudster called up again for the gold chain. By then, the scribe was ready with another tale. This time, he said the jeweller got greedy and refused to part with the chain, demanding Rs 5,000 more. To make it more convincing, Bhupendra spoke with a lot of earnestness and even choked on a couple of occasions during the conversation.
The scammer wired him another Rs 4,480. Finding it hard to believe that he was actually conning the con, Bhupendra was by now, as he puts it, in a ‘yeh-dil-mange-more’ mode. On March 10, the scammer called up yet again and the journo told him that he had got the chain and was going to sell it to a firm which offered him gold loan of Rs 1.10 lakh against it.
The fraudster readily agreed and asked the journo to go ahead with it. But there is a catch, Bhupendra told him. He said the gold loan finance company was asking for a processing fee of Rs 3,000. He even shared a receipt that he arranged from a friend who works at one such firm and told the fraud that it will just take another few minutes before he has the money. The scammer sent him another Rs 3,000, totalling Rs 10,980. The moment the line got disconnected, Bhupendra dialled up the cyber police.
The scammer got alarmed when he began to disconnect his calls and pleaded with the journo to at least return his money.
Kanpur police commissioner Akhil Kumar said, “The case is being investigated by the expert cyber sleuths. We have collected screenshots of the transactions, bank details, his phone number, video and audio communication between the complainant and crook. Soon, the fraudster will be in the police net.” He also advised against such risky endeavours and said that confronting cyber criminals directly could lead to dangerous situations. Kumar, however, mentioned that Singh’s clever reversal of fortune had earned him the position of “cyber safety crime ambassador”.
