Mumbai Drugs Parcel Scam: Fake Cops Extort ₹1.8 Crore From Senior Citizen

A 75-year-old retired man from Parel recently lost Rs1.8 crore to cons posing as courier firm executive and cops, who extorted the whopping amount from him on the pretext that a drugs parcel has been intercepted in his name.

According to the cyber police, the complainant received a call from a person claiming to be a DHL Express Courier representative. The caller informed the elderly that his parcel, destined from Lucknow to Myanmar, had been caught by Customs. Despite the septuagenarian's repeated assertions that the package doesn't belong to him, the caller persisted, detailing that the consignment contained 150 grams of MDMA, clothes, a laptop, 20 passports. Additionally, the con claimed to have the complainant's identity proof with the package, said police.

When he told the caller that he would contact Mumbai police, the latter asked him to reach out to Lucknow cops, reasoning that the package was dispatched from there. The con then connected the elderly with a fake Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officer over the call. The 'cop' instructed the complainant to download the Telegram app, where a group was created. It comprised fraudsters posing as officers from cyber cell, the CBI and Lucknow police.

All of them began threatening the senior citizen with arrest under drug-related charges. They forced him to withdraw all his money from the bank, including the amount held in fixed deposits and mutual funds. The scammers asked the complainant to send money under the guise of “notarized supervision,” promising that it would be returned after the probe. The victim was then coerced into electronically signing a document; purportedly a confidentiality agreement.

The terrified elderly transferred Rs1.8 crore in six transactions.