Beware of online fraud

I have known Dr Madhavan who is a professional librarian for sometime now. He travels frequently between Vancouver where his family stays and Jalgaon where he is on an assignment. Summer months are unbearable in Jalgaon and a good time for him to escape to Vancouver. Sometimes he comes to Kolkata to meet old friends and colleagues. This time when he came to my office he was carrying a bunch of papers with him. We exchanged pleasantries and then he mentioned that he was here on a purpose. He had got a job offer from a hospital in the UK. But he was a bit sceptical about the authenticity of its source since he was being asked to transfer a small amount of 300GBP to an account in the UK. So he thought of coming and checking this out with me. I could immediately sniff scam. This was not new to me . I had met similar job aspirants before.

I asked him to show me the documents that he had received from allegedly the hospital’s HR department.  The documents looked fine though the telephone address did not match with the details mentioned in the hospital website. I asked him to show the mail id from where the emails had generated. It confirmed my suspicion .The id was a personal id. I showed him the healthcare groups email id and explained to him that a genuine offer letter should have been sent from the company’s email id and not from a personal email id .Such a mail coming from a personal id was almost a certain indicator of fraud. I also asked him whether he had been interviewed by the company authorities. He mentioned that he had been sent a questionnaire which he had filled up and returned and then almost immediately he received a contract letter which had to be signed and mailed back to them confirming his acceptance. Again this had left him a bit puzzled. How could they recruit him without going through a proper interview process?

To clear his doubts and for further verification I put him in touch with the hospital helpline through our internal communication channel. I could hear him speaking to various officials as he was being guided to the right department who could help him. Finally he took down an email address .While he wrote I could see that it was a valid official address in the standard format which was mentioned in the company website. He had been asked by the authorities to forward the email that he had received to this address.

Madhavan thanked me profusely .He was leaving for Vancouver the following day. He promised to call me and let me know the final outcome. This week the Reserve Bank of India has issued a notice warning citizens of fraud being perpetrated in the name of RBI by luring gullible recipients with fraudulent emails promising transfer of huge sums of money to their accounts . Most of us have received such emails in the past and will continue receiving such mails in the future in our spam box . The practice has become so rampant that the RBI had to issue a notice in the interests of public good. However the funny thing is there will still be people and some very qualified ones too who will continue to be tempted by such offers.