Surat: A 45-yr-old woman employed as a technical staff at SVNIT in Surat has been duped of Rs 49,350 by fraudsters by creating a Facebook page of Ratan Tata Foundation and posing as the Personal Assistants of Ratan Tata and asking for the funds as fees for membership in order to meet India’s most respected industrialist in person.

Jhankhanaben Ramanbhai Desai received a message on April 6, 2022, on her Facebook account from the Facebook page of Tata Foundation offering her an opportunity to meet India’s famed industrialist personally. For that, the person had asked her to contact Ratan Tata’s PA, Shantanu Naidu, on his email id and also gave his email id to contact him to register as a member in order to be able to meet Ratan Tata personally.

When Jhankhanaben sent an email to that person for an opportunity to meet Ratan Tata in person, he asked for her personal and bank details. After she shared these details with the person, he gave her the bank account number of Mohammed Shahil and asked her to transfer $600 into the bank account and send a screenshot of it to him.

Jhankhanaben deposited Rs 49,350 into the bank account number sent to her and also provided the screenshot of the transaction to the person who had initiated the contact with her.

But she became suspicious when after 3-4 days, she was asked to deposit more money  and filed a complaint with the Cyber Crime police. The police are investigating the matter further post-filing of the complaint. Police Inspector TR Chowdhury is probing the entire issue.

DeshGujarat