Andheri businessman defrauded of Rs 3.7 L using nephew’s cloned voice

According to his police complaint, on the morning of January 15, he received a WhatsApp call from an unidentified number. His elder brother’s son, who lives abroad, was heard on that call.

His nephew told the complainant that he was returning to India on January 22 due to some business related work and that he had sent Rs 10 lakh to his account. He also requested the complainant not to disclose this to his father, the police said.

The same afternoon the complainant received a call from another number and it was his nephew again, who told him that he had sent the money and it will be credited to his account in the next 24 hours.

“Later, when the complainant had gone to south Mumbai, his nephew called him again and told him that he had been kidnapped by a person called Jagmohan. The nephew told the complainant to pay this person a ransom amount from the money he had sent to him or Jagmohan would destroy his passport, the FIR stated.

Scared, the complainant did what his nephew told him to and deposited Rs 3.70 lakhs in Jagmohan’s friend Karan’s account, as instructed.

After the payment the complainant called and informed his nephew that he had deposited the ransom money. But this time his nephew sounded a little different, prompting the complainant to believe that something fishy was going.

He then sent a payment acknowledgement receipt on his nephew’s regular number. To which his nephew replied asking what it was for. The complainant then narrated everything to him. His nephew then told him that he could not pick up the phone calls as he was in the office.

This is when the complainant realised that fraudsters somehow managed to clone his nephew’s voice and using a fraudulent story they defrauded him of Rs 3.70 lakh, a police officer said.

He then approached the Andheri police and filed a complaint.

Police suspect the fraudsters were well aware of the complainant and details his family background.

Cops also suspect that the accused may have used a voice changing software app or any Artificial Intelligence (AI) based system to clone a person’s voice to commit the fraud.

The police are in process of  seeking details of the beneficiary bank account to know more about the fraud.