A senior official of the state housing department at the New Secretariat Buildings got a WhatsApp message purportedly from an IAS officer in his department a few days ago asking him to transfer money to a friend’s bank account.
Suspicious, the official blocked the number and called the IAS officer to verify the message. He was then informed that the message he had received was not sent by that officer.
The official has lodged a complaint of attempted cheating with the detective department, an officer in Lalbazar said.
Kolkata police officers said they have received the complaint and have initiated a probe.
The incident has brought to the fore how fraudsters are targeting Kolkatans in the guise of people known to them.
This has also raised concerns about how the fraudsters are mapping their targets and acquiring information about their personal and professional contacts before attempting to dupe them.
An officer of the detective department said the incident happened on April 21 when the complainant — an officer of the rank of deputy secretary — received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number that bore the IAS officer’s name and had the display picture resembling the officer.
The conversation began with a simple “How was work today?” However, what appeared to be a seemingly harmless message from a senior officer of the department, turned suspicious when he directly asked the complainant if he had an online banking facility, said the police officer in Lalbazar.
“The complainant who had been responding to the messages thinking it was his superior was surprised after being asked whether he had access to online banking. The man told the complainant that one of his friend’s companies was in urgent need of funds,” the officer added.
A few months ago, Lalbazar had received a similar complaint against an unknown person who was trying to dupe others by posing as the Kolkata police commissioner and using the photograph of the then top cop Soumen Mitra as the display picture on WhatsApp.
But cops said this case appeared to be a different.
“In this case, the fraudster had full knowledge of the complainant’s profession and about the working relationship he shared with the IAS officer,” explained the officer.
