Paytm founder calls out scamster impersonating him; shares screenshots of hilarious exchange

Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma took to X to share screenshots of a humorous exchange with an alleged scammer, who attempted to impersonate him in order to extract sensitive information about the company's funds. Penning a post titled "Impersonating myself to me", Sharma revealed the chain of WhatsApp messages in which the fraudster introduced himself as Vijay Shekhar Sharma and asked the real Sharma to save his "new" phone number.

The encounter, which left many netizens in splits, also spotlighted the darker side of the digital world, where unsuspecting individuals are targeted by scamsters using sophisticated manoeuvres, advanced techniques, fake profiles, malicious links and impersonation.

In one of the messages, the alleged fraudster also urged Sharma to check and report back on the company's available funds.

The impersonator also demanded that Sharma share the number and contact details of the finance head of the company, and went so far as to ask Sharma to forward a suspicious .exe file-disguised as a GST document-to the finance executive.

Sharma who played along, then urged the impersonator to consider a salary hike.

Notably, the Telecom Department on Wednesday introduced the 'Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)' that enables enhanced intelligence sharing with banks, UPI service providers and financial institutions, a step it believes would mark a major step towards tackling cyber fraud and financial crime.

According to DoT, this will enhance cyber protection and validation checks in case of mobile numbers flagged with this tool, when digital payment is proposed to be made to such numbers.

FRI allows for swift, targeted, and collaborative action against suspected frauds in both telecom and financial domains, an official release said.

"...Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has announced sharing of 'Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)' with stakeholders -- an output from a multi-dimensional analytical tool developed as part of the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) to empower financial institutions with advance actionable intelligence for cyber fraud prevention," the release added..

It is pertinent to mention that Airtel, earlier this month, launched a fraud detection solution that will identify and block malicious websites across all communication Over-The-Top (OTT) apps and platforms including WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, email, and others in real-time.

The service is currently available in Haryana circle, with a nationwide roll-out planned soon.