From SIM cards to customer care servicing, there is hardly any option left by scammers to trap people for money. However, with the growth of digital platforms and increased access to people’s contact details, scammers have started preying on startup employees posing as the company’s CEO.
In a recent case, Meesho employee, Shikhar Saxena shared an incident where he received a message from an impostor, who pretended to be Vidit Atre, CEO of Meesho. The impostor asks Shikhar to make some urgent payments.
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Sharing a screenshot of the conversation with the scamster, Shikhar Sharma tweeted, “The latest scam in the startup world – Message from the CEO.”
In the screenshot, an unknown number, which has a profile picture of Meesho’s founder, texts Shikhar introducing himself. Later, he informs Shikhar of being on a conference call and requesting payment for the client’s gift. He also assured Shikhar to return the money later.
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“I am currently on a conference call with a client and I need to gift something to this client. Can you confirm if you can make this purchase with Paytm? I will reimburse you,” the scammer said. Sent message to Shikhar Sharma.
Soon after the incident was shared on Twitter, several others recalled a similar incident that happened to them. Some expressed their concern over the scammers’ more channelized way of targeting people, while others pointed to the ‘common script’ used by these scammers in every conversation.
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Sharing one such incident, Akash Gupta, CEO & Founder, Zypp Electric replied to Shikhar’s comment, ‘Yes, some people shared this for me too. Now what a hoax this is.”
“I get the same but the diversion is via email. That too from the CEO of my current working company. IDK how to know,” replied another Twitter user on the post.
“It’s not just the startup world. Even employees of established companies have received these messages from scammers,” said another user on the post.
Highlighting the large scale cases of such frauds, a Twitter user named ‘Nandan Kumar’ described such cases as examples of ‘CEO fraud’
“Usually it’s done through mail. But WhatsApp is even better, they don’t have to do much effort.”
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