Gurgaon founder says scammer impersonated him to trick employee into buying vouchers

A Gurgaon-based startup founder has revealed how a scammer impersonated him through email and attempted to trick one of his employees into purchasing gift vouchers worth Rs 25,000. The impersonator posed as Sankalp Shree, co-founder and director of Spectent, and exchanged several seemingly genuine emails with the employee before asking him to make the purchase.

Shree shared details of the incident on LinkedIn along with screenshots of the email conversation. He said he was surprised by how convincing the messages appeared.

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Scammer posed as startup founder

The conversation began when the impersonator asked the employee whether he was in the office. The scammer then claimed to have an important task and said he wanted to surprise some hardworking employees with bonus vouchers as a token of appreciation.

After the employee agreed to help, the impersonator instructed him to download the Amazon Pay app and look for Apple Store code vouchers under the recharge section.

The scammer asked the employee to purchase five vouchers worth Rs 5,000 each, taking the total amount to Rs 25,000. He was then told to send the voucher codes individually. The impersonator also promised to reimburse the amount by the end of the day.

Employee checks before making payment

The scam attempt was exposed when the employee hesitated to make the transaction. The impersonator then changed his approach, claiming he was unable to make any transactions and asking the employee to borrow the money from someone else.

The scammer assured the employee that the amount would be returned once he was able to transfer the money. However, the employee checked with Shree before proceeding and did not make the purchase.

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Founder warns about social engineering scams

Shree said the most concerning aspect of the incident was that the emails did not appear obviously fraudulent and that the conversation seemed genuine.

“As a founder, I'd heard of phishing emails, but I never imagined someone would impersonate me to target my own team,” Shree wrote.

He said the incident showed that cyber attacks are increasingly focused not only on compromising systems but also on manipulating people.