‘Sister in hospital, please help’: Ex-Coal India exec loses Rs 40,000 in Kerala’s first deepfake case

Four months in, Kozhikode city police on Friday cracked the case, arresting one of the alleged accused, Shaik Murtuzamiya Hayat Bhai (43), from Mehsana in Gujarat. Police say he allegedly arranged fake bank accounts for the prime accused, Kaushal Shah from Ahmedabad, who is on the run.

City police commissioner Rajpal Meena said this is the first arrest in a cyber crime using deepfake technology – wherein facial appearance is manipulated through deep generative methods.

Prima facie, police believe Kaushal was the one who allegedly used deepfake technology to impersonate a friend of the complainant during a video call.

Kozhikode cyber crime inspector Dinesh Koroth said the amount debited from the account was transferred to an account of a person in Ahmedabad. From there, it was transferred to the account of a gambling firm, where Kaushal is a regular. Eventually, the money would return to Kaushal as wins from gambling – a strategy employed to mislead police.

Inspector Koroth said the police reached Shaik from Kaushal’s call detail records. According to them, Shaik maintained several bank accounts taken in the names of poor people who were not linked to the crime. “We have come to know that the accused were involved in cases of similar nature in Gujarat and Karnataka,” said the officer.

Police said Kaushal is believed to have got details of the complainant and his friend from a WhatsApp group of former company employees.

Kaushal, police said, is a B.Com graduate and comes from an affluent family. “We have learnt that his relatives and friends have complained about his cheating habit. Banks have also filed civil cases against him,” said the inspector.

Recalling the incident on July 9, Radhakrishnan, who retired from Coal India 12 years ago as a senior executive, said he did not doubt when the person who sent a flurry of messages identified himself as Venu Kumar. “We had known each other for four decades. He started sending messages about my family and shared photos of his family. When I was going through these messages, I got a WhatsApp voice call from that number.”

“There was no reason to doubt his voice, which I had been familiar with for decades. He told me that he was at Dubai airport and would reach Mumbai that evening. His sister was in hospital and Rs 40,000 was needed for surgery. He told me that he would return the money once he reached Mumbai. He asked me to transfer Rs 40,000 to a bystander’s account. When I started to raise doubts, he immediately made a video call. His image and voice were so clear that I had no reason to doubt things anymore. He WhatsApped a number, to which I credited the amount,” he said.

Radhakrishan became suspicious after the fraudster demanded another Rs 35,000. “I felt something was fishy then. When he insisted on the second payment, I hung up the call.”

Radhakrishan then made a call to Venu Kumar, who lives in Andhra Pradesh, on his phone number that he found on a WhatsApp group of former Coal India executives. “When I called Venu, he was excited to talk to me after many years. When I shot back that we had already talked in the morning and I had transferred money to him, he was stunned. Then I realised it was a scam, and I filed a complaint with the cyber police,’’ he said.