“Dawood Ibrahim is my chacha”: A man deceives internet con artists pretending to be Mumbai Police

NEW DELHI: When an X user got a phony call from con artists pretending to be representatives of the Mumbai Police and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), it exposed a sophisticated fraud operation. For around sixty minutes, the complex deception convinced the victim that it was real.

The message told the receiver to call 9 for more information and forewarned them that their phone number would be banned in two hours. After that, the call was handed to someone posing as the Telecom Division representative.

This person misrepresented to the receiver that a complaint had been made in Bombay Andheri East over unlawful advertising and abusive text messages sent from a number associated with their Aadhaar card. They said that all phone lines connected to the Aadhaar owner had to be blocked since the Mumbai Police had submitted a banning request to TRAI.

The con artist claimed to have sent the call to the Andheri East police station and gave fake information from a FIR. In order to avoid the blocking, the receiver was told to ask the police for a “clarification letter” proving they were the owner of the original number and to distance themselves from the alleged crime. The con artist justified this process by pointing out that identity theft is common in India.

After that, the phone was routed to a second con artist posing as a Mumbai Police sub-inspector (SI). This person gathered some personal information and said that because the receiver could not be in Bombay in person, a statement would have to be taken.

A third person made a video call to the receiver, dressed in a police uniform and spoke English well. The recipient was suspicious since the third person did not have a Marathi accent. The con artist gave a fictitious order to “investigate” the matter while posing as his head constable and spoke to him in English. The receiver made the choice to comply with the behavior.

The receiver purposefully gave the fourth scammer—who was pretending to be the chief constable—the wrong Aadhaar number when he sought to record the recipient’s “statement.” The con artists persisted in their deception, claiming that the receiver was a party to a “Rs 65-crore money laundering case.”

The receiver laughed and said, “This got too funny there and honestly, cringe,” in response to the scammer’s suspicious question about whether or not they were concealing anything. He questioned, “Kya aap kuch chhupa rahe ho hum se.” “Dawood is my chacha,” I informed him. “Who is Dawood?” he questioned. Ibrahim Dawood. My uncle, or chacha, is him. He said, “I told them to screw off, and that was it.

The user said, “The point is that the scammers are now a lot more sophisticated in their tactics,” and he encouraged the Mumbai Police to take notice of his post regarding scammers mimicking them. I don’t see why the elder generation, including my parents, won’t be duped by this. For thirty minutes, I paid for the whole skit.” His social media post went viral very fast, and many other people shared his stories.

Another microblogger posted a photo of a phony Mumbai police identification card that scammers are using extensively.
Mumbai_Police_Scam

“Apparently, they were also sharing this identity card of the same cop when I got the same call,” she said.